Ohio Governorship a done deal for Republicans and what we can learn from it. [View all]

[Savannahmann]

I love history because I believe that those who learn from history can avoid the mistakes of the past. So what can we learn from the campaign of Ed FitzGerald in Ohio?

“Voting from the bottom to the top: That is the way we need to roll this year,” said Nina Turner, a candidate for secretary of state.

Translation: Ignore the contest for governor and concentrate on the down-ballot races for the five other statewide offices, where Democrats are challenging Republican incumbents.

I've spent the last couple hours reading news article after post on the Ohio Race. Focusing mostly on Ohio based news organizations. It's a disaster, a defeat of epic proportions in the making. So what happened? How did the Democrats nominate someone with such poor judgement that they would select a tax cheat as a Lieutenant Governor, and then forget to do the little things, like get a drivers license? Why does this matter anyway?

I've talked many times before about image. About how you say things, and how you present your arguments. Simply shouting that Republicans are awful doesn't win elections unless there has been a slew of articles and scandals breaking that show the Rethugs being awful. So you have to campaign for something. You have to present plans that are if not original, are then credited to smart people you are emulating. But there is one thing you can never do. You can never, under any circumstance, appear to think yourself special, blessed, or above the people you are asking to vote for you. In other words, you can't be arrogant, egotistical, or a member of the elites. You can never behave as though you think that the laws are for the little people, and not something that you personally must endure.

Those who are elected, or hired to work for the Government, are called Public Servants. The public expects the servants that they are going to elect will actually obey the laws that they pass for the public. If your campaign position is that Republicans don't have the rich pay their fair share of taxes, you better be sure you've paid your taxes. Because if you haven't, then you will drag down those around you.

The Drivers License thing was just stupid. While we can assume that Ed FitzGerald didn't know about Eric Kearney's tax issues before he was nominated as Lieutenant Governor, we can reasonably expect that Ed FitzGerald would have known he didn't have a Drivers License, especially when he was driving Government cars. That is the image of arrogance that I'm talking about. Oh I don't need a license you see, I'm elected, and nobody would issue me a citation.

In the old days, before the internet. You could safely expect much of this sort of thing to remain hidden unless you were caught red handed. Today, with the internet, you're screwed.

So what should we do as Democrats? We should encourage the parties. State, local, and national parties should spend a day sitting down with a candidate and letting them know that whatever dirt there is, no matter how deeply buried it might be, will come out. Vet them in other words. Then the candidate knows that the election cycle anal exam will be even worse, and if there is something they have hidden, they had better choose to proceed and hope it stays hidden, or drag it into the light themselves, and take the scandal out of the campaign early.

Imagine it friends. "Yes, I did screw up a few years ago. But I've learned, and I've made no secret of this mistake, and I've paid my dues, debts, and apologized for this mistake." Then you're a human, who like the rest of us, makes the mistakes that the rest of us do. You have admitted the mistake, and talked about the lessons you've learned. The news of the mistake lasts a day, or two, or a few days at the most depending on the enormity of the mistake, and then is over and history. If the Republicans bring it up later, you laugh and point to the interviews you gave on the mistake, and how it's a shame that the Republicans didn't bother to read the papers. You continue on your issues at that point, because you have already covered the mistake and it's out there in the light. Honesty is very endearing to voters. They don't expect you to be perfect, but they do expect you to be honest. They also expect you to learn from your mistakes, so if you have a DUI where you paid the normal penalty. No problem if it was a few years ago or more. If you have more than one DUI, find a new line of work. Because you didn't learn from the first one. The voters can tolerate a mistake if you learn from them, they can't and won't tolerate someone who won't learn from a mistake.

So from Ohio we learn, or I hope we do. Because we as a party need to learn from our mistakes too.