I remember sitting in the front of my dad’s boat, the hum of the trolling motor in my ears for like the third or fourth hour, waiting for my lure trailing out of the back of the boat to snag something…anything. Trying to catch candidates to run in an election should not be the same experience.
In a blast email yesterday afternoon from the Democratic Party of Georgia, they “fish” their list by writing:
“We hope to field candidates in all of these races, but we need your assistance. Please contact us if you know anyone who may wish to run in the following races so that we can discuss”
Further on: “I just wanted you to know that even after November’s historic election, we are still pounding the pavement to recruit, develop, and grow our Democratic numbers in Georgia. We’ve been building a solid bench of future candidates for almost two years and our efforts are paying off.” Well that can’t be true. If they’ve been recruiting candidates for two years and don’t have any for two very large State Senate seats then obviously their “paying off” effort is not working, nevermind that this message is a communication fail – donors to the Party must be asking themselves, “if I gave them money over the last two years and theyve been recruiting, why don’t we have candidates”? That’s a good question.
Something tells me the Party doesn’t have the contacts they need, particularly in the two Senate seats, if they’re blasting their email list for recruiting help. One would think after two energetic presidential campaigns in ’08 and ’12, and just picking up the phone and calling some of the local Democratically elected local officials and local Democratic Party officials, that they could have produced a few candidates. After working for former State Rep. Stephanie Stuckey Benfield in 2010 to recruit candidates for the state house, I can tell you that recruiting isn’t hard work, but it is time-consuming and requires frequent contact via phone and some face-to-face time at the local level.
The Democratic Party may be shooting itself in the foot with these type of blast email instead of personal recruiting. By announcing the dates and where to qualify, Democrats may end up with multiple candidates for the same House and Senate races thus eliminating their chances to get one Democratic candidate over the vote threshold and guaranteeing a win, and continued supermajority, for the Republicans. (insert forehead slap/face palm here)
Mentioned in previous comments, State Senate District 11 is likely the best shot Democrats will have at picking up any Senate seat this year, maybe even this decade, particularly if the Democrats hope to hold back a consitutional majority in at least one of the state’s legislative chambers. Let’s hope the Senate Democratic Caucus is having better luck recruiting candidates for Districts 11 and 21, and hopefully, this will be the last time I hear the hum of the Party having to troll its email list for candidates…any candidates.
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