This is the time in an election that reality sets in for some candidates.  Those candidates that have embraced the energizer bunny strategy of walking to hundreds of households or writing handwritten notes to Republicans in a district of 50,000 voters start to realize why fund raising is so important.

This past weekend lots of candidates were out walking door to door.  They probably worked really hard to speak to 100 people at most.  I am being generous at 100.  They are doing this because they are working hard and are sincere in their desire to win the election.  Meanwhile another candidate with more resources is communicating with tens of thousands of voters at a time in the mailbox, radio, television, and/or automated calls.

Last week at this time many of these elections in races with more than 10,000 voters were close.  All of the candidates were unknown.  Just one week later the candidates with the resources to communicate to the electorate are making huge strides in earning votes with absentee and election day voters.

To the energizer bunny candidate — It just doesn’t seem fair.  They would do a much better job in (Congress/Senate/Assembly/BOS/City Council) than [name of candidate with resources].

What is unfortunate is that we often want to root for the people the use the energizer bunny strategy. They are good honest people that work hard and show a desire to serve.  In the end, they are almost always on a path to losing simply because they are overwhelmed by the power of mass communication.

The real test now is what happens when hopes start to dim.  This is when we hear a manufactured charge, a demand for more debates, and attacks on campaign staff because of hurt feelings and the loss of dreams.

This week is when candidates wish they would have spent more time fund raising in January-May so they could actually have a chance in June.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 12th, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.