Antenori’s Amateurish Election Pitch Spreadsheet

By Michael Bryan

An interesting little info-graphic from Frank Antenori's CD8/2 campaign:

What pops out for me is the absolutey amateurish way this was put together.

It's clearly just a spreadsheet. And just as clearly the person who threw it together has no concept of style or design, or even basic typographical competence.

The font sizes are oddly mismatched – just look at Antenori's name! The capitalization is haphazard. The spacing, bolding, and cell fill all seem practically random.

This is a communication from a person who wants to be a Member of Congress? It looks like it was hammered out by a college kid coming off a bender with an assignment due in a hour.

Now, let's consider the substance.

The main comparison seems to be with Kelly; Sitton and McSally seem to be on the table mainly as an afterthought, and the cell fill colors on Antenori's and Kelly's columns seem to reinforce that. Weirdly, as to community ties and education, Sitton and McSally make Antenori look light.

The main raps on Kelly seem to be his loss to Giffords in 2010, his rather flexible connections to the district, and – of all the things for a Republican to focus on while Santorum is waging a War on the Educated – the assertion that Kelly is a college drop-out.

Frank also seems to be claiming a superior ability to attract independent voters based on his election in LD30. This is a bit misleading as Frank compares apples and oranges. In CD8, he cites an 8% GOP advantage for Kelly, which is true, but in comparison to Dems ONLY. In LD30, he claims that he only had a 41% GOP registration, which is true, but is misleading since that percentage is of ALL voters. Only comparing Dems to GOP voters in LD30, the GOP had a whopping 40% registration advantage. Hardly a challenging electoral environment for a Republican.

Plus, Frank only beat his Democratic opponent in 2008 by a mere 6% despite that massive advantage in registration. Though, admittedly he did better in the sweep of 2010, whomping his Dem opponent 60/40. So, is Frank a draw for indpendents? Not so much. I'm surprised to see him even making the argument that he has better appeal outside the party: neither he nor Kelly are really the sort to care about their independent appeal. Both these guys are all about feeding the red meat to the base, not making the GOP tent bigger.

Over all, however, Antenori makes a powerful argument that he is a more experienced, committed, and viable candidate than Kelly. If he had made the pitch without such an amateurish presentation, it might even have been compelling.

Come on, Frank. You need to execute better than this to kick Kelly's smarmy punk ass in this primary. Nut up and pay for some actual talent next time instead of letting some volunteer knock something together on his laptop.