More Reasons for the Very Bad Election Results

More Reasons for the Very Bad Election Results

I found several additional reasons that individually contributed to the poor results, I suspect.

1. Jamie Anderson, who signed up to run for county commissioner as a Republican, sure didn't sound like one to me at one of the candidate forums--she sounded like a liberal to leftist Democrat. Sure enough, that's exactly what she is. But a lot of Democrats voted in the Republican primary here in Boise County to help her get the nomination--and while they were on the Republican ballot, they appear to have voted heavily for Tim Corder--who is something of a Democrat Lite. This may explain why I didn't even carry Boise County--and why there were only 182 votes for the Democrat running for state senator in the Democratic primary. Yet another argument for a closed primary. Since there are seldom contested Democratic primaries, the temptation for Democrats to play games like this are very strong--and they have a strong reason to protect Tim Corder from a Republican challenge.

2. A co-worker who lives north of Horseshoe Bend tells me that at school, his daughters are able to play with the children of other newcomers--but the children of the families that have been here for generations pretty much keep to themselves. I suspect that the same thing is at play at election time. My family hasn't been here for several generations. If this is a factor, I have no hope of ever getting elected, as long as Tim Corder or one of the other third generation Idahoan families decides to run.

3. I answered a number of questionnaires, including one from Idaho Chooses Life and the Cornerstone Institute. Both of them were asking very binary questions about complex issues. In particular, I did my best to articulate that concerning abortion, Idaho has gone about as far as it can under Roe v. Wade, and until the Supreme Court overturns it, there's not much that the state can do--but in the meantime, pro-life groups should be working hard to persuade pro-choice people over to the pro-life side--or at least neutralize them.

The reason is that passing laws to restrict abortion is unlikely to be successful at reducing abortions--and I gave the example of Oregon. Before Roe v. Wade, Oregon had a very restrictive abortion law--and yet it had 199 abortions per 1,000 live births. Pretty clearly, the law was not being followed, nor prosecuted. Much of the decline in abortions in the 1990s wasn't because of laws, but because pro-life groups successfully persuaded a lot of people that abortion was either murder, or a bad choice, or pragmatically a bad idea.

But all those subtle points were lost in the detailed statements that I attached to the questionnaires--only the simple yes and no answers went up on the web. I am inclined to think that the next time, I will simply not return questionnaires like this.

The Boise County Republican Central Committee is going to reform on Monday night. I think I will show up, and try to find out exactly what is going on here. In this primary, I emphasized several significant areas of difference with the incumbent: illegal immigration; sexual orientation as a protected class; and more alternatives to the public school system. It is possible that Republicans here are heavily in favor of illegal immigration, sexual orientation as a protected class, and maintaining the public school monopoly. If so, I am terribly, terribly confused by what is going on here.