Saturday, 31 March 2007

Harper's Disappearing Campaign

It looks like Harper's campaign manager, Stan Pulliam, has decided to resign his position with the Harper campaign for personal reasons. This is another tough break for the Harper campaign.

What started out as a refreshing campaign that was trying innovative tactics to build a grass root effort suffered two deadly body blows that proved devastating. The first occurred when the anti-Fletcher forces coalesced around Northup and pushed her into the race. He had hoped to carry the flag for those who wanted Fletcher out, but that didn't happen. His next hope was that Fletcher and Northup would engage each other in a mud slinging battle. When that didn't materialize, his campaign ran out of options for gaining traction and became stuck in neutral fading behind Fletcher and Northup.

I got a chance to talk to Stan early in the campaign, and he seemed like a bright and energetic fellow. I hope everything is alright for him and wish him the best luck in any future endeavors.

Posted by elendil at 4:53 PM in Kentucky Politics
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A Tail of Two Campaigns

The Republican primary has become a tale of two drastically different campaigns. The Fletcher's team has spent most of their energy exclusively promoting Fletcher's accomplishments in office. They point towards his ability to take a budget deficit and turn it into a surplus. He lowered taxes for most Kentuckians. He reduced the size of state government and streamlined how state government is organized and operates. In fact the only comments he has publicly made about his opponents is that he welcomes them into the race. For an embattled governor, I am amazed at how they have been disciplined enough not to rejoin Northup in slinging mud.

On the other side of the spectrum you have the Northup campaign which has relentlessly attacked the Fletcher administration on a number of issues. First it was Fletcher was unelectable. Then it was Fletcher supported the alternative minimum tax and the AMT is bad. (Of course it is amusing that her running mate Hoover was one of the biggest supporters of the tax when it was passed by the state legislature.) Now Northup is saying that Fletcher is lying about his claims of job creation. Each week seems to bring another attack on Fletcher. Which in my mind makes this primary a fascinating election cycle.

Rarely do you get two campaigns that have starkly different strategies for winning the election. From a purely political science perspective it will be most interesting to see which side wins. Can a solely negative campaign win an election? Can you remain positive and not attack your opponent and win an election? People claim they are tired of all the negative campaigning. We will see if that is true come May.

Posted by elendil at 4:33 PM in Kentucky Politics
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