Posts published in May 2010

UPDATE Some takeback on what follows in this post. The video may have been well-crafted, but it turns out there's a problem acknowledged by Lucas Baumbach, who put it together: "No, it wasn't accurate . . . I admit that there was a lot of editing that went on there." So factor that in . . . but also the fact that the power of the vid is such that we're likely to see more of this ahead.

Is it too soon to call the Idaho political video of the year? Maybe not.

This one actually made Leno and went solidly viral around the country. And deservedly so: It was brilliantly put together. It'll take something really amazing to top this.

It had an agenda, of course. Lucas Baumbach, who is the new Republican nominee for the state Senate (District 17) and a Tea Party-oriented activist, had made clear elsewhere that he much preferred, in the 1st District U.S. House Republican race, Raul Labrador over Vaughn Ward. But it was his stunning back-and-forth construction of this one that just wiped out Ward - the more so because its point was just as powerful whether you like Barack Obama or not.

Not everyone approved, of course. an email to the Idaho Conservative Blogger remarked, "Lucas Baumbach should be ashamed of himself for what amounted to political dirty tricks against Ward with his video." Dirty tricks? There's been no indication that Baumbach made up or somehow created the video. The words were what they were; the compare-and-contrast was totally fair.

Be it noted that this isn't the only significant video wreaking damage on Ward in recent weeks. Another, by Colin Mansfield, consisting of raw footage (of a debate in which the candidates talked about Puerto Rico statehood), captured Ward gaffes in a way the more davastating because it was so plainly shown without elaboration.

TV commercials? Fugeddaboudit. Vids like these are far more powerful.

Taking a quick look at the county breakout of the Republican primary vote in Idaho's two U.S. House districts . . .

The hot contest was in the 1st, mainly between Raul Labrador (who won) and Vaughn Ward (who was the clear frontrunner for most of the campaign). It wasn't especially close: 47.6% to 38.9%. If the polling and the sense of local comment are reasonable guides, this probably was a race that broke pretty hard toward the end, as the storm of bad news descended on Ward.

There's some support for this in the county breakdown, where you'd expect more voter response to the news items to come in the larger, and more media-centered, counties. Labrador's strongest county (57.9%), of the district's 19, was Ada County (Boise). That could have been helped along, though not explained entirely, by Labrador's many years of work in the county Republican organization. But the hard-breaking news had to be a factor. Next-door and second-largest Canyon County, at 53.9% (and where Labrador had no comparable personal history), was Labrador's third-best.

The third largest county in the district, Kootenai, went for Ward (46.7% to 37.1%). Could the changing media environment in that area have mattered in that? The Spokane Spokesman-Review, which covered the 1st district race intensively and broke some major stories, was once the dominant newspaper presence there, but has largely pulled out, and the remaining local papers appeared to have less coverage of the quirks in the race. Did that matter?

Labrador's best five counties, in order: Ada, Payette, Canyon, Gem, Washington. His weakest: Shoshone, Nez Perce, Adams, Latah, Lewis - generally, the least Republican areas of the district. One conclusion from that might be that Labrador has an excellent shot at solidifying his base. Which, in an Idaho 1st general election, could be enough.

The 2nd district was nowhere near as suspenseful; there, incumbent Republican Mike Simpson won decisively as he had been broadly expected to. Simpson has won easy big re-elections for years. There, the question is different: What percentage of Republicans are insurgent enough to vote against this widely-liked and clearly-conservative incumbent?

Well, Simpson got 58.2% of the vote - which suggests that a pretty significant slice of the voters turn thumbs down.

The more interesting element of the vote is that won by Chick Heileson (24.2% overall), the ideological absolutist fire-breather whose every third word is "constitution" and every other third is his interpretation of it. Heileson came in second of the four candidates (one of whom was a state legislator) and won one county, Jefferson (47.9% to 37.3%) over Simpson, and decisively. His approach clearly struck a note in eastern Idaho, which is where his best results were: After Jefferson, Heileson's best were Bonneville, Bannock, Butte, Oneida, Madison, Fremont, Bingham, Caribou, Clark - all radiating outward from the Idaho Falls-Rigby area. Ada County was one of his weakest (8.9%), and he scored just so-so in the Magic Valley.

There's an increasing edginess in Idaho politics.

For the better part of the year or so Vaughn Ward has been running for the U.S. House, he has been the front runner - much of that time, a seemingly prohibitive front runner. One other candidate, legislator Ken Roberts (who this evening won his own contested primary for his current seat), dropped out because there seemed no way to beat him. When another legislator, Raul Labrador, entered the race, there seemed to be no realistic prospect he could beat him either.

What has happened over the last couple of months culminating in tonight's primary win by Labrador over Ward, and this ought to be remembered, is that Ward chiefly defeated himself. A few months ago he had or seemed to have absolutely everything you need to succeed at this. He had good presence, articulated well, lots of money, lots of party connections, full-time and intensive, campaigning, strong organization - pretty much everything. He raised money far behind what Labrador did. Most of the big names in Idaho Republican politics who were doing endorsements, did them for Ward.

But Ward blew up, in a series of goofs and gaffes so rapid-fire that they finally attracted national attention.

This isn't to slight Labrador, who ran a solid campaign and had positioned himself well enough to take advantage of the situation when his opposition fell apart. But it also means he will have to develop, starting from a much more basic level, a national-caliber campaign, something Ward seemed to have done already. We'll come back to this in a future post.

For the moment . . . just goes to show how, even in Idaho, politics is never entirely predictable.