Sam Blakeslee’s strong showing in the June 22nd special election for California’s 15th Senate District has led to some of the least credible spin seen by political observers in many years – and that’s saying a great deal.
Republican Blakeslee received 49.5% of the vote in a four candidate field, narrowly missing an outright victory by only a few hundred votes. Former Assemblyman John Laird trailed by almost 8 percentage points – a profoundly disappointing showing for the Santa Cruz liberal.
Pundits were surprised by both the strength of Blakeslee’s support and the weakness of Laird’s. Yet Laird is ridiculously attempting to declare victory on a liberal blog with the justification that he barely avoided complete defeat. Laird’s claim to be the winner on June 22nd after losing by 8 points undermines both the Democrat’s credibility and grasp of basic math skills – but it might explain the fiscal chaos that resulted during his tenure as the longtime Chairman of the Assembly Budget Committee.
What’s more, Laird had earlier been publicly pushing polling that he claimed showed the race a tie and stating that he was well positioned to win the race.
In a recent editorial, Laird claims that Blakeslee "cynically took advantage of disproportionately high Republican turnout in the June 8 primary election in order to drive up absentee votes." While it is true that Blakeslee won the absentee vote with about 49% of the vote, it is also true that Sam won the June 22 election day vote with 52%!
The election day results suggest that the longer voters had to study Mr. Laird’s record, the more likely they were to vote for Sam Blakeslee.
Sam Blakeslee didn’t benefit from the early absentee vote. The early absentee vote kept John Laird from losing outright in the primary.
Laird’s spin can only be described as factually inaccurate and just plain silly.
Laird started off the campaign by launching misleading and cynical negative attacks which tried to paint Sam Blakeslee as hostile to the environment and a tool of the oil companies. He portrayed the GOP candidate as a "drill baby drill" Republican and former Exxon executive in an effort to exploit the tragedy in the Gulf. As the election results demonstrated, the Laird strategy failed miserably
Now Laird’s campaign is left scrambling. His attacks failed while he is weighed down by his own extremely liberal record in the Legislature and legacy as one of the biggest tax-and-spend politicians to ever serve in Sacramento.
Indeed, the LA Times reports that Laird’s fellow Democrats are frustrated with their leader, Senator Darrell Steinberg, for putting forward in the 15th such a liberal candidate who didn’t fit the district for the special election. Steinberg – and Laird – now find themselves on the defensive in the Senate Democratic Caucus.
Apparently, Democratic Senators don’t believe Laird’s spin either.
The funniest aspect of Laird’s reverse spin is his latest suggestion that he’s advantaged by his expectation that the August 17th run-off date will have low voter turnout. But for weeks, Laird had complained that the June 22nd primary date advantaged Republicans because it would lead to lower turnout.
Laird’s spin is so lame because it is contradicted by so much – his earlier spin, the clear results of the election, and the former Assemblyman’s terrible record on job creation, taxes and government spending in the Legislature.
John Laird’s desperation is understandable. Laird clearly needs to get a new campaign strategy – and some new spin – pretty darn fast.