By PHK
If my mail is any indication, the much vaunted Republican micro-targeting machine isn’t all it’s cut out to be. If the machine was as good as they claim, the computer whizzes behind it would have figured out by now that I have no intention of voting to reelect Heather Wilson-R to Congress for her fourth term. After all, they’re supposed to have all sorts of data about me (and all other potential voters too) that tells them whether I’m worth cultivating – or inundating my mailbox with ads. Or for that matter anyone else in my household.
Guess they don’t read WhirledView – or check out my party registration – or the elect Madrid sign on the front lawn. How myopic: I thought in the Republican needle-targeted “get-out-the-vote” operation, the computer geeks would have already recorded my highly visible signs of opposition and moved on to greener pastures.
Let's try again
Hello - out there in Republican land. Do you hear me? Do us all a favor. Can the junk mail. Forget the political advertising – it’s time for a change in Washington – and Wilson is as close to a clone of W – or perhaps I should say puppet of W’s policies – as I know. Check the record. Save your shekels because I’m not interested. Period. And yes, I will vote between now and Election Day. You can bet the bank it won’t be for Heather, either.
But I guess Wilson’s direct mail organization has a tin ear because I just counted the number of pro-Heather/anti-Patsy Madrid postcards I have received from the Republican Party (with tiny return addresses in miniscule letters as if they were ashamed of something) in the past week. I received the same number of cards from the other side: eight each. Interesting turn of events. How times have changed.
A race still too close to call
Heather is a more practiced debater than Madrid – and it showed in last week’s TV debate on KOAT- Channel 4. But I have to say, Ms. Wilson also came across as the ice queen that she is. She also came across as someone who – for all her glibness and self-proclaimed experience in the national security field - is incredibly naive or deluded. Take your choice. That's what bothered me most.
Not only did she still tout W’s “stay the course” line – even though W had waffled out of it a few days before, but she also proclaimed that her decision to support W’s ill-fated invasion of Iraq was right because of – get this – Saddam Hussein’s purported biological weapons. Huh? A new twist to an old tale: Why couldn’t she just admit that she had been wrong – or more likely duped by her own political bosses? That she listened to the wrong people. Maybe she should have listened to CRS, the non-partisan research/analysis arm of the Congress - these analysts had it right - and their information was at her fingertips at every step of the turn. But I wonder, could she have had Judy Miller as her debate coach last week?
Actually, I think the winner of that debate was KOAT –Channel 4. The format and the questions asked were excellent. Kudos to the producers and the channel’s willingness to forego commercials for an hour as a public service.
Meanwhile, back at the polls
The latest Reuters/Zogby poll (taken October 24-29) showed Madrid with a nine point lead over Wilson – a one point drop from its previous poll taken between September 15 and October 02. What’s significant in this latest poll is that those in the undecided column have dropped from 6% to 2%. It's just possible then that Wilson may not have picked up the traction she obviously hoped for after last week’s debate. Now even if the Reuters/Zogby polls may tilt a little more to the left than some – but not all - of the competition the picture this latest poll paints is still pretty impressive. The final Journal poll which should depict a closer race is due out on Sunday.
Perhaps the laudatory opinions of Heather’s claque - whose members seem to have spent most of their post debate time writing letters of self-congratulations about Heather’s debate “triumph” to the Albuquerque Journal, the local Republican paper and political consultant Joe Monahan - may not have made much of a dent with the rank and file after all.
But this is a small state, Madrid is well known here too and perhaps people just think its time to put a break on a run-away White House - at least that's what I hear around town.
What’s also significant is that this time Hispanic support for Wilson has dropped by 15% (according to the Journal’s own financed pollster) and is moving into the Madrid column. Madrid, after all, is our Attorney General and she comes from one of New Mexico’s earliest Hispanic pioneer families. And frankly, she came across as far more human that Ms. Ice Queen who, I might add, never once mentioned her family (a husband and three young adopted kids). Since husband and kids live in New Mexico, and Wilson spends most of her time in DC, could she have - like - forgotten they exist?
But as I said on October 20, this race is still way too tight to call
The Republican get out the vote machine is running on overdrive – but so is the Democrats. And both parties are pulling in the heavy weights as we move into the home stretch: Bill Clinton for a public rally Wednesday night (info’s on the web) and Barbara Bush for the Republicans on Thursday (details unknown.)
Ironic isn’t it that our "wonderful" President from a neighboring state whose foreign policy fiasco in Iraq has more than anything turned normally ho-hum Congressional elections into a referendum on his presidency is being kept away from the hustings - including this one. Says a lot about his popularity in this bell-weather state and elsewhere this election year, doesn’t it.