AlanBarber.Org
Thursday, November 06, 2003
2003 Election - Good and Bad
It's been a good and bad year for Republicans in the election.We managed to get two more governors, well 3 if you count Arnold out in California. Ernie Fletcher(rep) beat out Ben Chandler(dem) for the Kentucky governorship. The first time a Republican has been elected since 1967 by the way. In Mississippi Haley Barbour(rep) managed to oust the current governor Ronnie Musgrove(dem).
On the local front, thanks to the help from several college republican clubs in Ohio, Janet Weir Creighton (rep) won the mayoral race for the city of Canton. This was actually a White House targeted race. Why you ask, because Canton is the largest city in Ohio the democrats don't have a stronghold on the mayoral race. Our local club was actually called by the White House to personally request our help on the race. We had originally planned on helping in the Kentucky race. However, that changed when the White House called. So we all spent a Saturday afternoon roaming around Canton handing out literature.
Lit drops as their called are really boring. Basically you get handed a bunch of little bags full of post cards, flyers, etc and a long list of addresses to hit. It depends on what they want but you do one of two things. You either just do a hang and run or you actually try to talk to the people. The hang and runs are used more for mass canvassing where you hit most houses on a street. You usually only get asked to talk to people when it's very targeted. In that case it's not rare to only hit 2-3 houses on a street. The individuals are usually registered Republicans that have not voted in the last election or newly registered. The idea being to make sure to get those you know for sure will vote for the candidate to actually go out and vote.
Personally I prefer the hang and runs. There's just something oddly satisfying about looking back down a street and seeing every house with a little white bag handing on the door. Maybe it's because I know it's going to piss off a bunch of Liberals.
Anyways that's the good. The bad is that It appears that democrats did a major sweep of local governments all over the place. While we won the Mayor seat in Canton, 8 of the 10 city council spots went to democrats. Similar in my hometown where the Republican mayor won re-election, the democrats took 4 out of the 5 council spots. And looking at statewide numbers it appears the same all over.
So it's been good and bad in 2003. However the real fun will be next year.
on 11/06/2003 at 09:23 PM