« Two Faced Tom | Main | Ohio 2 recap »
July 29, 2005
Ohio Special Election
The amount of money and volunteer time being raised and directed to the special election in Ohio's 2nd Congressional district is amazing. And of course, a lot of it is being done outside of the structure of the official Democratic Party -- the DCCC hasn't particularly gotten involved.
Some on the internet (before the votes are even cast) are proclaiming this a new era of Democratic politics. They may be correct, but they are probably wrong. This is a special election, occuring in summer in a year when only 2 states (New Jersey and Va) are holding statewide elections and there are no other federal election contests being voted on for at least 10 months.
The problem is that the other 434 Congressional seats all get voted on at the same time. If you've got $2,000 (or $100) to give to a candidate, it's easy to have a show of force when there is only one candidate to give to. Many bloggers wanted to turn the OH-2 race into a test tube race where new techniques could be tested for use on other non-targetted races. But that's not what has happened. The campaign is being run like every other real campaign (with all of the television/mail advertising you'd find) because unlike most other longshot races, this candidate has been able to fundraise as if he were in a targetted district.
By all means, Paul Hackett should be in Congress. And I hope he wins on Tuesday. If he does, bloggers should remember that this is a "special" election and it's hard to tell what exactly that holds for normal ones held on election day. Remember, Democrats won all of the special Congressional elections in 2003 and 2004 and didn't exactly ride that non-existant momentum to victory on November 2nd. One thing that's certainly special about this election is the ability of a candidate running in a 35% Democratic district to raise serious money. Unfortunately, all to many candidates running in 45%+ Democratic districts next year won't be able to come close.
Posted by Chris at July 29, 2005 01:01 PM
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)