I along with many others who talk about politics thought Judy would be a natural antidote to Rod’s poll tested themes and smooth delivery. Underlying that assumption was that she built up a lot of goodwill through her time in office and was well liked by voters.
I think the reality is setting in that she wasn’t that good of a candidate for a bunch of reasons that are abundantly clear now. Rolling pin jokes are funny until everyone is listening.
And I count myself in this category, but I think there needs to be a rethinking of how this election played out. Rod is credited with killing her off early and that’s not entirely wrong, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. She had a strong hand in killing her own campaign off.
This kind of goes with my points in the past that political junkies like her for the very reasons the public doesn’t. She’s brash, a little loud, a bit goofy, and doesn’t pretend to have easy answers. The problem with that is when people pay a fairly small amount of attention to politics and that’s their first impression and then it gets reinforced, she’s not so likeable. Average voters aren’t taking the time to get to know the goofy good side, they are seeing what seems like your crazy aunt in the attic running for Governor. Some might still argue that’s better than Rod, but it doesn’t matter.
Sure the ads finished her off, but the initial wounds were self-inflicted.
I think Rod gets some credit for his May campaign, where he did a good job of acknowledging the scandal just a little bit, saying “we’ve been through some tough times”, rather than going into a state of denial.
The fact is that Rod isn’t as bad as you thought, and Judy isn’t as good as you thought. Have there been stumbles along the way? Sure. But no one could be convinced that Judy was the solution to that. In fact, Blago is FAR better than Thompson, Edgar and Ryan, no doubt about it. The Illinois GOP is a shambles right now, while the Democrats are more organized than ever. One more election and we’ll see what the 2012 map looks like. The GOP better hope they have Blago as a whipping boy next time and they can get their act together. Because if Lisa draws the map their doomed you might as well change the license plates to the Land of Douglass.
Well…I told you so. The Republican theme this year should have been cleaning up corruption but they picked a nominee who has twice been investigated for corruption in office and is too tied to the old system. I wrote nearly a year ago that Ray LaHood would have been the best Republican candidate because he is fairly moderate, could harness central and western Illinois swing voters, and he hasn’t been part of the corrupt system of state politics. Does anyone think Rich Whitney would be polling at 20% in central Illinois if LaHood had been the nominee? Picking Topinka was a moronic move on the Republicans part, but I don’t mind since I’m a Democrat.
I still think the lasting lesson of this campaign is that if you have millions to spend on months of negative advertising you can make Mother Theresa look like a whore, but there is some truth to what you’re saying, Arch.
JBT brassiness and quirkiness are endearing to voters — and the press — when she’s running down the ballot, but when you’re at the top of the ticket, you’re held to a higher standard. I have a feeling Jesse White would be judged differently if he ran for governor or senator, too. Voters would pay more attention to nepotism in his office and suddenly the tumblers wouldn’t seem so charming.
Ray LaHood as a candidate? C’mon! It would have been dirt easy to tie LaHood to Bush and Hastert. And Bush and the national GOP are part of Topinka’s problem.
What the GOP needed was a self-financer without ties to Bush or George Ryan who could have cut into Blagojevich’s base.
The trouble with a Republican supporting a tax swap is that Blagojevich stood to gain as much support from anti-tax Republicans as he stood to lose from rah-rah school spending Dems.
But Bush gets a good chunk of credit for Blagojevich winning. By polarizing the country as much as possible and engaging in scorched-earth politics, it made it hard for any Republican to score crossover votes.