Nick Leibham ran against the immigrant bashing Brian Bilbray in the 50th congressional district where I live. Bilbray won by a vanishingly small percentage 50.05%. If a few more votes had come in, we might be looking at a run off today. It is hard to say what went wrong but because I've been active in this district all summer and fall, I do have some opinions.
The numbers:The numbers:
Detailed #'s:
BRIAN BILBRAY (we call him 'Bilgebray') 126,726 50.05%
NICK LEIBHAM 115,442 45.60%
WAYNE DUNLAP 11,019 4.35%
A surprising number of votes went to the Libertarian Candidate Wayne Dunlap. I consider Libertarian's conservatives so, if he hadn't ran, maybe Bilbray would have had more than a cat's whisker thickness of 265 votes. Then again, maybe it would have been otherwise. However, there is another factor.
Leibham was aided by the Orange to Blue effort and the DCCC. However, apparently little to none of that money went to organizing and assisting canvassing and more importantly, Poll Watching. As it was, I turned out to be the only poll watcher for the urban community of Mira Mesa in San Diego. We're talking thousands if not tens of thousands of voters. Despite what you may think, there are more registered Democrats here than Republicans. (However there are a lot of 'Decline to State,' or independent voters.) I watched a combined polling place complete with a food gifts and would have minded a couple of more if I had knows that Leibham and the County Democratic organization had ignored the political basics and wasted it on TV.
I have heard for campaign after campaign that the Republican's secret of success is their highly targeted GOTV effort. Democrats have said, "Yes, Yes, we get it! We're fixing it! Wait till you see what you get next time!" What I got (after calling 5 times over 3 days) was only a little better than a telephone book. What's wrong with this picture? Why was San Diego abandoned at the last moment?