Now that the dust is settling from the recent election, with recounts finished and results set to be certified, we are to be treated to analysis of what went right and what wrong in some races. It’s interesting to read what different people think of how the election went and why votes turned out as they did.
Of particular interest is the race for County Commissioner between incumbent Marc Boldt and challenger, businessman David Madore since the Columbian expended a lot of ink to discourage voters from selecting Madore, having abandoned their previous disdain for Boldt, embracing him now that he slid left in many positions and came out in support of the CRC and light rail.
Someone, and I don’t know for sure who, decided that Boldt should maintain he is still a Republican even though he had abandoned nearly every Republican position since winning the Commissioner seat. Possibly it was recommended because his two previous elections were fairly decisive and handlers figured it would be again.
They were wrong as we saw Boldt strongly defeated, Republicans throwing their support, both the local party and voters to Madore.
The Columbian did everything they could to promote Boldt, but as a maligned Republican, victim of a decrepit party hierarchy out of touch with citizens in Clark County since he had been sanctioned by the local party last year for his turning his back on Republican principles.
Madore was presented as a greedy rich guy, buying the seat since he invested his own money into his campaign and did not need to ask struggling middle class voters for funding.
The Columbian endorsed Boldt, both in the primary and the general, but maintained he was the right kind of Republican, even though most of us knew he was really a Democrat, just not in official name yet.
The local Democrat Party did not endorse him, but fund raisers were heavily attended by many Democrats, but he was publicly promoted as a Republican still with the Columbian asking, “Would Democratic voters throw their support behind Republican County Commissioner Marc Boldt, the more moderate of two candidates in an all-Republican race?”
Throughout the campaign, this blog and even more so Clark County Politics blog, written by Boldt’s brother-in-law Kelly Hinton recommended time and again that Boldt should stop pretending and just declare himself a Democrat and campaign as a Democrat.
He refused and apparently the Columbian saw fit to not join us in that call.
Had Boldt made the switch officially, he may very well have won as we now see in his race, over 35,000 voters did not select either him or David Madore.
The Columbian, in a post-election analysis now states,
“It appears that many Democratic voters simply left that race on their ballot blank, resulting in what election officials call a large ‘under vote’.”
They go on to quote Boldt,
“The truth of it is we knew that a fair amount of Democrats wouldn’t vote. What we didn’t know is that (the under vote) would have been that huge. We just assumed that since I was in trouble with my own party, that I might get a fair amount of the Democrats. That assumption was wrong.”
Yes Marc, dead wrong. But you wouldn’t listen and tried to portray yourself, falsely portray I might add, that you are still a Republican when we all know better.
Anybody who pays attention to the 49th Legislative District should realize that Democrats just will not support someone they perceive to be Republican. They will continually reelect people like Jim Moeller, even as he undermines them, holds them in disdain by suing to invalidate their votes and taxes them in ways that they even choose to overturn through citizen initiative.
The heavy Democrat stronghold will repeatedly elect inexperienced people over well experienced ones, just so long as they have that ‘D’ behind their name, as we have seen time and again and especially this latest election for State Senator where someone never involved much in politics won over a well experienced former legislator due to that ‘D.’
While I am pleased with the outcome of the Commissioner races, seeing now that we will have two more conservative Commissioners and just the one liberal, it likely would have turned out different had the Columbian not portrayed Boldt as a victim of the GOP and just encouraged and promoted him as the Democrat he became.
More than anybody else, we have the Columbian and their idiotic effort to portray Boldt as a maligned Republican to thank for informing voters throughout the county that the local GOP had turned their backs on him for his turning his back on us, telling Republicans that Madore was who was the endorsed candidate.
We can also thank them for letting Democrats all over the county know that Boldt was running a Republican, thereby discouraging hardcore Democrats from voting for him, over 35,000 in the county leaving the box blank this election for either candidate.
Boldt lost by over 13,000 votes, almost one third of the under votes and had he just ran openly as the Democrat that he is, there is a very good chance that he might still be County Commissioner.
But he followed the bad advice given him by both the Columbian and his handlers and lost big, finally giving the county what we voted for four years ago, a more conservative leaning County Commission.
I especially thank the editorial board at the Columbian for ensuring that Democrats knew Boldt was running as a Republican.
We can also thank the lamestream media, the Columbians John Laird and the Democrat Party for their false portrayal of all Republicans as the scourge of the earth, rich old white guys that hate everything under the sun and eat dead children for dinner.
Ya’ll tried to run one of your own as one of us, after years of brainwashing your people to hate the very thing you tried to portray him as.
In that one race, your vitriol came back to bite you in the ass.
