Tuesday, November 06, 2012

In Elections, Money Is Number One

I'm really bummed out for Rupert, in getting a 4% result in the Indiana Governor's race. I was hoping against hope that because of his celebrity status and his larger-than-life persona, taken together with the enormous amount of personal outreach he undertook, that he would be seeing numbers at least in the teens.

Rupert may be the best retail politician I've ever seen. He connects with people directly like nobody else I've ever observed. The lesson here is that none of that matters these days. While Indiana is a smaller state, it's still too big to meet everybody. What matters most is money.

I hate that. I didn't want to believe it when I ran for Secretary of State. I made (if memory serves) about 250 campaign appearances. It didn't matter. I got 3%. I was told ahead of time by my campaign manager Sam Goldstein to focus on raising money for ads, and forget about blogging and doing appearances- unless those appearances resulted in at least $200 coming home. I fired Sam. Trouble is, he was right. He lets me know about it whenever he can, and I let him let me know about it, because he was right. I can't deny reality.

I try to build myself up by rationalizing that I probably touched a few people personally, and they became Libertarian voters or candidates themselves is later years. I'll never really know. What I do know is that in order to reach the great bulk of voters, advertising is the only way, and advertising takes money. That's the reality of the situation. It's why millions of dollars are poured into tight races.

Sure, our base is growing. But it's going to take 20 years to win if we keep doubling every 4- and there's no guarantee of that. Money, money, money. *sigh*

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