Porter County - Where do we go from here?
On our local site Porter County Politics the comments and debates have actually increased in this week of dismal election results. Here’s the rundown:
- We lost two more seats on the County Council to Democrats running “against” practically everything
- We once again lost any chance of controlling the County Commissioners, returning our most moderate Republican and losing the south county seat
- We didn’t even touch the sitting Democrat judge
- Mitch Daniels lost Porter County, even though winning the entire state by 18 points, and Greg Zoeller actually got more votes in Porter County than Mitch did
- Obviously from the red-blue county maps all over the web today, Porter County went to Obama, and thus we find ourselves stuck in the NW Indiana Region mentality.
- The unions privately backed MItch Daniels for Major Moves jobs, but publicly campaigned for straight ticket Democrat voting, with the results being 3,500 more D straight tickets than R
- In the week prior to the election the Regional Development Authority (RDA) which was established by the legislature for NW Indiana, was supplied tax dollars from Lake and Porter County, announced that a South Shore Extension could go to Lowell (in Lake County) but that Valparaiso (Porter County) was off the table. This got little coverage due to election news … but
- The day after the election our County GOP chair announced that Porter County’s membership in the RDA should be reviewed. His rational? That the voters obviously voted for Democrats, who’s campaign was based on being “against” RDA, new taxes, South Shore Extension, Illiana Expressway, and a whole host of other growth initiatives. He said the voters have spoken. This won’t play well in Indianapolis.
- There is now a brewing undercurrent of dissension in the ranks, with those outside Valparaiso feeling that the rest of the county has not been represented well by the power brokers in Valparaiso.
- Oh yeah, and the Ron Paul people are still out there trying to pick up enough precinct chairs that they can “reorganize” the party at the local and state level
That’s proabably a good start for now. We have some rebuilding to do, we lost big. We made mistakes locally just like nationally. We need to learn from Mitch and his team, and give taxpayers a sense of protection from local and state government largess. We need more grass roots involvement and less top-down orders. We need to raise money in $100 increments instead of going to the power brokers for $10,000 and allowing them too much access in return.
November 9th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Steve this where I really think everyone is really off base. I do not believe that anyone is voting against anything. I think the problem is we were understaffed as the Obama camp paid canvassers 10.00 an hour to go out and register and then convince voters.
We really need to stop overthinking and just go back to building the base. Trust me I know I made polling phone calls to newly registered voter asking one if they had recently registered and two if they were voting McCain or Obama and then if they were voting Daniels or Long Thompson. Let me tell you I was shocked by how many people asked me who Daniels and Long Thompson were. Then there were the huge amount of voters that said they really don’t know who the other candidates are they were told to just fill in the D on the ballot. People by the way that couldn’t even spell Valparaiso and didn’t know that they lived in Porter County not Lake County.
Funny how everyone has dozens of suggestions on how to fix this but just how many phone calls and doors knocking did all the people offering suggestions on what went wrong do?
Trust me I was there 7 days a week I didn’t see a lot of you.
November 9th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Valerie,
First, nice shot
you’ll find me less than enthusiastic about GOTV efforts in the last five days of any election. The year I chaired the successful Costas campaign Adrian and I just about came to blows over pulling all our volunteers for phone banks in the final week.
I firmly believe that people make their minds up before the last GOTV effort. Many people made up their minds for President based one who they were told was winning in the polls, we’re followers, we like to be in the cool crowd.
For the most part Republicans aren’t cool right now!
As for paying people that takes money, lots of it. For online efforts, engaging, involvement in regional initiatives … all takes lots of money. We watched as Obama raised money in small increments from people excited about his vision. We need to learn from and do more of that.
As for “against” everything, you know as well as I do that we’ve lost every election outside of Valparaiso for the last 8 years because Democrats have owned the “against” agenda, including against new taxes. There’s a great divide between Valpo and the rest of the county, probably time for a non-Valpo chairman with the ability to think Gen X, technology, and conservative policy.
November 10th, 2008 at 4:44 am
If you thought that was a shot I apologize. I was not taking a shot at anyone. I don’t truly buy the whole Obama raised small increments story either. I guess I don’t choose to be so naive. As far as losing every election outside of Valpo I will agree that 2006 and 2008 were rough years other than that we were on top of our game. However, times change and so do the people that move into Porter County.
I think that as a chairman Chuck has more than done his job which is to raise money and over see the operation of everything. He was out doing door knockers etc… We still have to canvass which by the way was done the entire month of October not just the last five days.
Since the 2004 elections we have gone from 88,000 voters to over 121,000. We don’t need a tech savy chairman as much as we need to start getting tech savy volunteers or if we need to hire tech savy people. I don’t believe I have seen a chairman sitting and entering data into a computer ever and there are a lot of tech savy chairman out there.
I am sure with an entire year of off election year we will figure out our direction and be more proactive than reactive.