confederate+flag
or, how I learned to stop worrying and love positive campaigning
The Andy Griffith Endorsement
After that stunningly insightful look at the Republican race for Governor, I’ll tackle the vitriolic Democratic race.
The race actually ended about a week ago. Beverly Perdue has pulled ahead by a margin of 47-33 against Richard Moore, all because of this:
The infamous Andy Griffith endorsement. North Carolina voters saw this in full effect in 2000 when Andy endorsed now Governor Mike Easley in the weeks before the election.
The race started as a battle royale between Moore and Bev, as each tried to tag the other one as the candidate of Wall Street, and themselves as the candidate of Main Street. Well, when it finally reached critical mass, and Bev saw that such a ferocious primary might prevent her from winning the general election, and she pulled her negative ads off the air, and put an ad on the air to tell everyone about it. Moore had no idea what to do. The success of his campaign relied on tearing down Bev and pulling himself up. When she pulled off her ads, and trumpeted the Andy endorsement, she effectively left Moore with nowhere to go.
So, the campaign for the last two weeks has been Moore trying to find examples of Bev breaking her pledge, and he has failed miserably. The final straw came forth a few days ago when his campaign staff had a press conference to denounce the fact that her stepson’s line of gas stations sells things with the Confederate Flag on them. Moore couldn’t bring himself to attend the event.
That’s right. While Bev is out there talking about health care, education, and jobs, Moore is not attending press conferences talking about a line of gas stations she barely is connected with. Between this and the Andy endorsement, I name this race over, with Bev being the overwhelming victor in her tactical use of Andy Griffith and positive campaigning once she had taken the lead. Round one is over. The General election is looming quickly.
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