The State Democratic pre primary nominating convention is over. In another 24 hours the results of the voting will be meaningless. Any candidate who thinks this has anything to do with primary election day is fooling themselves. There were no upsets at the convention. Martin Heinrich came in first with 55% of the delegate vote over Hector Balderas. Eric Griego dispatched former Mayor Martin Chavez and County Commissioner Michelle Lujan Griffin in the congressional race. I think Chavez's former live in girlfriend who was just indicted for embezzling $3 million dollars probably hurt him a little.
Now that this process is over the real campaign for rank and file voters is joined. The money race to fuel those expensive TV ads will now commence at an accelerated pace. It is better to have more money than your opponents and some candidates will go anywhere to get it.
The one good thing about the convention is that it gets the party activists into the same room and gabbing with each other. In the end that will end up fostering unity. But not until after the Primary!
1 comment:
You've been seeing these conventions for years and I don't doubt what you say, but the fact that those conventions exist (Republicans have them, too) raises questions in my mind. The candidates who were there yesterday were probably all establishment Democrats, but what if an insurgent, an outsider, tried to get on the ballot as a Democrat? These conventions are there to stop someone like that, right?
There'd be pros and cons to that, too. For example, a candidate might get on the ballot who could bring down the whole ticket, so the Party wouldn't want that to happen. But it does limit ballot access in a way.
You can always run as a third party candidate but there are issues of ballot placement and so on because of the two party agreement that controls the elections, right?
(Hector Balderas did rush out a fundraising appeal yesterday afternoon based on his surprising 45 percent showing versus Heinrich, which is a higher percentage than he's been getting vis a vis Heinrich in opinion polls and fundraising dollars. It at least boosted his and his supporters morale, and may have allowed some to envision an underdog win for him.)
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