The campaign Diane Douglas has run in the Supe Race will provide us with information about the Arizona electorate we may not want to know.
You see, Douglas, and the campaign she has run, have given us an electorate as close as you could get to the analogue of a group that takes only a placebo in a drug trial, a group otherwise known as a control group. Actually, a terrific Democratic candidate, David Garcia, running a top-notch campaign, also was a necessary condition in this experiment.
What this year’s Supe Race will provide is a measure analogous to what a control group in a drug trial gives us. In a drug trial, the control group results from taking a placebo tell us what we can expect with no drug intervention. In science speak, that’s a baseline.
Specifically, the results in the Supe Race will give us a baseline of what percent of the electorate in Arizona will vote R in a statewide, down-ballot race, in a mid-term election with a Democrat in the White House with no reason other than the absence of a scandal to do so.
Think about it. Douglas has not run a campaign. She has intentionally ducked both the media and the public, appearing only in front of teabaggers whom she does not need to persuade. Her only endorsement comes from crackpot Michelle Malkin. It’s a meaningless endorsement because the only voters who would be moved by it would vote for Douglas anyhow. At the same time, Garcia has run an energetic, virtually mistake-free campaign. He has endorsements from Republicans, all the major newspapers, the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and others that have the potential to move voters who otherwise would not vote D. Garcia has made countless public appearances, and has raised money sufficient to get his message out, including through paid TV ads, something we don’t often see in a down-ballot race.
So, essentially, there has been virtually nothing other than party affiliation and absence of scandal to influence voters to vote R in the Supe Race, whereas the influence pushing in the other direction is about as large as it possibly could be in a down-ballot race. If ever there was an election that measured the baseline, this is it.
In this election, the percentage of the electorate that votes for Douglas will represent the worst a Republican can do in a statewide, down-ballot race in a mid-term election with a Democrat in the White House. Yes, no two elections are the same and obviously the composition of the electorate is constantly changing. Nonetheless, this is about as close as we’ll get to an accurate measurement of this baseline.
Here’s the ugly part: We just may find that the baseline is over 50%. It may be that absent a scandal races like this one are not winnable for Democrats in Arizona.
Or it may be that these races are winnable, but with little or no margin for error. For example, if Garcia wins with 51% of the vote, we’ll know that winning a race like this one only has a one percentage point margin of error. If you lose just one percentage point of those voters you have a chance of persuading, you lose.
Whoever wins this one, the Supe Race is going to give us an objective measure of just how truly uphill it is for Democrats to win in Arizona statewide. And I doubt many on the left will find what they learn very hopeful.
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Having supported, met and funded Mr. Garcia’s campaign I believe the real issue why Mr. Garcia lost is very simple, his last name. Teajadhist are anglo white males, they may know the times are a changing, hispanic AMERICANs are becoming more of a grassroots political and econ power within the state and region. The question, when will all Arizona voters vote fro the clearly best candidate? Not with Sherrif Clown-Boy’s NeoCon, FOX watching flat worlders are voting. She never spoke to the media except the Teajadhists, should that not disqualify her. Not here in the land of retirees from elsewhere who have to much free time, money and are very happy with their fascist politics. Goldwater conservatives have become an endangered species, with the NeoCon fascists call Goldwater conservatives, real conservatives, “RHINOs”. The Goldwater Institute pretends to reflect Sen. Goldwater’s philosophy but they do not.
Is AZ doomed? I hope not but with this is not the conservative state I moved to decades ago. Mr. Garica is the future, you cannot stop this trend, hispanic American.
Since they announced Douglas as the winner a few hours ago, I guess it proves your theory. Several people I spoke to who had voted for Douglas acknowleged Garcia was VERY qualified…TOO qualified, in fact. They didn’t trust a member of the education industry to run things. It sounds dum but they just don’t trust educators to get resources into the classrooms and to get pay raises for teachers.
That IS truly dumb. And public education is not an industry.
It may be dumb, but it is real. I think the evidence is found in the failure of Arizonans to elect professional educators to high positions. I didn’t vote for Douglas, but I understand those who did.
The education industry – and it IS an industry – has created for itself a great deal of scepticism as to whether it can be trusted or not. Year after year, we approve funding overides or new bond issues or new taxes, and we never see more resources in the classroom, or fewer students per teacher, or better pay for teachers…where does the money go? Educators are very vague about that. And the quality of the students produced is POOR. That is why colleges and universities have remedial no credit classes: to bring the students up to a level where they might have a chance to make it through to a degree.
Education IS an industry. It has lobbiests, unions, strikes, etc., just like any other industry. It protects it’s members from accountability and provides tenure to keep even the worst in place. There is nothing that makes it different from any other industry with vested interests and it’s own agenda. And that agenda is NOT focused on the students.
What is it about education that makes people with no expertise in it whatsoever think they know more than people who have worked in it their entire lives?
It is because the product of your lifes work goes out into the world and demonstrates a disturbingly large number of them are functionally illiterate. It is very much like the auto makers of Detroit back in the 1970s, they were so called professionals at building cars, but the cars they built were crap. I was a Commander of Army Recruiters in San Diego in the early 1980s, and our statistics showed that 2/3 of our applicants couldn’t pass the tests to join the Army. If I knew how, I would attach connections to numerous articles and studies that show when teachers are given proficiency tests, significant numbers of them fail the tests. Just because there are professional educators doesn’t mean they are doing a professional job.
You see, the reason people who aren’t involved with the education industry as a profession still judge it is because we live with the failings of the system…and the system is, and has been, failing. Measure the United States against any other industrialized nation and we rank low. Worse yet, a high school diploma has virtually no value to it any more. There are good reasons why the education industry does everything it can to keep objective assessments from being made of their skills and knowledge…the results would be embarassing.
Unfortunately, Gilbert school district residents had to experience Tea Party craziness first hand before they voted it out. Maybe the bright side of our Superintendent-Elect is that she will evoke the same thing statewide.
Right on target. Douglas is truly the control group candidate. One can only hope that the reflexive Republican tribal vote for her will not be as large as you fear.
Unfortunately, Bill, it was almost exactly as large as I feared.