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Wednesday, November 04, 2009

More center candidates please.......

The election last night showed that Duluth would prefer to have more center candidates run. Beth Olson and Becky Hall (both seem to be very nice people.) lean to far one way or the other. Well the two candidates that did win Jim Stauber and Dan Hartman are more center candidates.

The closeness of the 4th district race only shows that people where split. If one of the two candidates in that race would have been more center they would have easily won. The race was less then two hundred votes in a win for Kerry Guithier.

I think both Hall and Olson could have done some things different to better represent them self's. Olson needed to be more aggressive against people that railed her for being arrested and having an alternative life style. Olson instead just wanted to sweep the issue's under the rug. Unfortunately for her it did not work out. A more aggressive approach could have put her in office.

Hall only needed to do two things and she would have been a shoe in. One is instead of just saying she will brings jobs to Duluth she needed to tell us how. She did not do so. Her background in business is well known however she just said she has the experience to bring business. If Hall would have taken the time and effort to explain her plan she also could be sitting on the council come next year.


The other thing I think hurt her is that she did not ridicule a message board more. DCB a right leaning board that has talked up Hall. I think that is okay however some of the things said on the board were down right uncalled for. I think Hall needed to come out and say. People have a right to voice there thoughts. I However don't agree with name calling and attacks on other candidates.

Did the board play that much of a role in her lose? I don't think so however it may have had some factor. The board has been under new ownership for a while now and sense then has gotten out of control.

Would these suggestions have changes the out come of the race I don't know. As I said Olson and Hall both lean further to the right or left then both Hartman and Stauber. The race was very close. So I don't know if these would have helped either of them but it is a thought.

That said I am okay with the results in this race.

8 comments:

CK said...

John, I really don't think the DCB played a role in this election, except for dooming Becky Hall's chances for election. It's hard to take seriously someone whose supporters behave like lunatics and think attacking other candidates and their supporters is going to win votes for the candidate they obviously supported.

I really don't think voters cared that much about Beth Olson's past, and I think her strategy of sticking to the issues instead of explaining her private life was right on. Beth Olson barely lost to Jim Stauber, despite all his name recognition and his being the incumbent. She lost by 183 votes. There are certainly at least 10 x that number of voters who don't want to spend a dime on education and voted against the Red Plan. Stauber is well known as anti-taxes and anti-Red Plan, so he picked up *a lot* of those votes.

If there'd been little or no controversy over the Red Plan, Beth Olson would have won a seat on city council.

I do think this is the death knell for the DCB under its current ownership. They supported Becky Hall, and ignored Jim Stauber. They ridiculed Beth Olson and did everything they could to destroy her good name. Their candidate -- who has a lot of name recognition as she's run for office 3 times now, or is it 4 -- came in dead last, and Beth Olson -- whom nobody had heard of last summer -- lost to the incumbent by a very narrow margin, proving the DCB's tactics are *completely* ineffectual.

Tony Ramone said...

John, I think you make some excellent points in your post.

Gauthier still won by 4 percentage points -- not bad when you consider he was also subjected to smears.

CK made a comment that I think made sense to me, the anti-red plan voter turnout helped Stauber.

I think bigotry toward homosexuals played some part in the 471 vote margin between Hartman and Olson. I don't know how many votes Olson lost because she was an activist and she at one time married her then partner in Canada, but I think if Beth Olson was married to a man, she would have beat out Stauber.

Hall lost because she is perceived as too far right. She made a lot mistakes. She should not have tried to run away from the Republican Party and she should have done a better job of distancing herself from the right-wing nutjobs in Duluth.

Anonymous said...

John:

Great post. You are right on about Hall as you have been all along.

I to wish that there would have been more center candidates. The fourth district race was much closer then most people thought. I thought it would a walk for Kerry but it was not. Grant did a good job closing the gap.

Danny said...

Yes John. Brilliant analysis of the Hall campaign. Where ever did you come up with it?

Unknown said...

Not your podcast Danny. YOu believe what you wish. The fact is I have thought that for month infact I have been saying in private for a long time. I believe it was time to say in public so to speak.

But again you think what you wish. BTW you where not the only person that thougth Stauber and Hartman would win last nigh.

Tony Ramone said...

John, I have to congratulate you for calling the Boyle and Wagner race exactly right: "My predication is Boyle wins 80% to 20%".

By the way, John, I doubt you are the kind of person who would subject yourself to aural torture just so you could steal political analysis from a clown. He really has to got over himself.

Unknown said...

Tony:

Thanks well I did not do predictions here this year. I had the races called righ. My wife and I always right down what we think is going to happen in the election the night before. This year I was right on.

As far as Danny goes no I did not rip him off he can believe what he wishes. I have emailed him a couple of times about it.

I have said what I posted today for month in private just the way I posted it today.

Unknown said...

Anonymous:

Thank you for your post. I did not approve it because I do not wnat this post or any to become a persnoaly attack on anyone.