by David Safier
A few random thoughts about some of the primary elections:
- Raul Grivalva won big! Yeah, we all knew it was gonna happen, but it still feels good to see it on paper.
- Russell Pearce lost substantially! Proving in Arizona, it is possible to be too right wing, too beligerent and too much of an asshole. It looks like his brother Lester is going down as well. It's a twofer.
- Ben Quayle lost. The fact that Schweikert won doesn't thrill me, but it's nice to see Ben get his hat handed to him.
- Ron Barber wins handily. An 82%-17% win over a credible candidate like Matt Heinz means Barber is on solid footing with CD-2 Democrats. It speaks well for his chances against McSally in the general.
- Some quality Dems lost in tough primaries. Congrats to the winners. Somebody had to lose. In LD-9, it was Dustin Cox (Congrats to Mohur Sidhwa and Victoria Steele). In LD-10, it was Brandon Patrick (Congrats to Stefanie Mach and Bruce Wheeler). In CD-9, it was David Schapira and Andrei Cherny (Congrats to Kyrsten Sinema). These were all strong fields with good, thoughtful Dems supporting the winners and the losers. I hope we see more of the candidates who didn't make the cut. One passing observation: All of the people who lost were men. This may speak to the strength of women's votes as well as the strength of the winning candidates.
- Vic Williams comes in third! It wasn't even close in the Republican primary for Pima County Supervisor, District 1. Vic ran 16% behind the winner, Ally Miller, and a surprising (for me) 9% behind second place Mike Hellon. Vic is the only current office holder, so he has the strongest name recognition. I guess with Vic, long time familiarity breeds growing contempt. Bonus feature #1: Vic plowed at least $125,000 of his own money into his campaign, putting out a bunch of mailers in the last weeks. With his humiliating defeat, I doubt he's going to find ways to raise funds to pay himself back. Bonus feature #2: The only true moderate in the race, Mike Hellon, got 31% of the vote. Those Hellon-supporting Republicans and Independents are going to have trouble transfering their loyalty to extremist Tea Partier Ally Miller. Democrat Nancy Young Wright has a very good chance of picking up lots of moderate Republicans and Independents who might have voted for Hellon if he made it to the general.
Recent Comments