Thoughts on PA12

Losing sucks but it was clearly a tough place for a Republican to win. I am told, the district was originally Gerrymandered to create a strong Democrat seat by Republicans hoping to move as many Dems out of other districts as possible.

I didn’t originally go up to PA12 to actively campaign for Burns. I went as a chaperone for the Generation Joshua volunteers. That became driving for walkers and calling during downtime. (I was hoping to work on another project.) The GenJ volunteers made an average 2000+ phone calls each. Roughly, thirty-five kids ranging in age from 13 to 21 made about 75,000 phone calls in 4 days. They were obviously encouraging folks to vote for Burns and “get out to vote” for Burns. While I did both of these I probably engaged in more in depth conversations since I viewed it as an opportunity to hear what people thought of the race and why. I made about 500 phone calls.
The two biggest complaints I heard were
1. The number of calls being received from Burns supporters. Not just our group but several and for weeks leading up to the election. Between five and ten per calls per day for weeks I was told by pretty much everybody. Some calls were for the other side but the overwhelming numbers were pro Burns. Really had people mad. Did the left do this?
2. That Burns was chosen over Russell when Russell gave such a good fight to Murtha in 08. More than one person I spoke to on Election Day said they wrote Russell in for the special election. More than once I was told it wasn’t fair by people who told me they were going to vote for Burns.

Did the Republican Party lose this election by choosing Burns?

I met Burns and liked him so it isn’t a question of personal preference.

Most conservatives seemed to prefer Russell but found Burns an acceptable alternative.

Another interesting thing was the level of confusion among voters. I don’t know if it was incidental or perhaps deliberate on the part of the left. When I was told people registered as Independents or Democrats didn’t understand they could vote for Burns in the Special election I thought nobody was that stupid uninformed. Then I talked to people. Many did in fact think, since the Primary was going on, they could not vote for the Republican. While the campaign obviously recognized this problem at the end I do not know what efforts were made before to dispel this myth. Better educational materials may have helped. None of the campaign materials I saw addressed this effectively.

The message callers were supposed to deliver was an obnoxiously canned message.
I was thanked a number of times for being a real person instead of a pre-recorded message. Even by people who were going to vote for Critz. Robo-callers beware.

Most of the folks I talked to were polite but again irritated by another Burns call. Better coordination in these things is a must.
Having three voters in a house meant literally three calls in a twenty minute period. Nobody culled the list for duplicates. Some houses had 4 or 5 voters listed.

Out of 500 phone calls about half were wrong numbers/out of service or hang up before you could even speak. Yes wrong numbers and out of service. This was a 72 hour call list that had maybe 5% out of service and 25% wrong numbers. (Yes, I am sure many wrong numbers just hoped to be taken off the list.)
The other half probably went 50-50 live person or voicemail.

Congratulations to Dan Middleton the GenJ team leader for putting out a great effort.

Congratulations to Sestak on beating Spector . Why are we leaving it up to the left to beat the RINO’s out of politics?

Finally,

If you are going to get cussed out it will be by a sweet little old lady. Everybody else was at least marginally polite.

• Don’t Forget the PA Special Election When Writing the Narrative (outsidethebeltway.com)
• America can only be Right: Mark Critz Defeats Tim Burns (liberalslie.blogtownhall.com)
• A Win-Lose Scenario for Jack Murtha’s Old Seat (online.wsj.com)