Since this turns out to be a “milestone” post (number 250)* I wanted to do something “important” with it. With just over 6 weeks remaining until the general election, this seems like a pretty good time to work out some of what I’m planning to do with monoblogue for election coverage.
First of all though I’m going to go back and review my pre-primary election coverage. There were four major initiatives I began during that period, some were more successful than others.
The first part of the equation was expanded coverage of political forums, which I thought were very successful in the two most important aspects – it gave people who couldn’t be there an idea of what went on and it also brought new readers to monoblogue. With the exception of the weeks immediately after I was on vacation and also last week after the primary election, monoblogue readership has established new all-time highs week after week since about the first of June. According to my much stricter Site Meter, I had close to 800 readers in the week before the primary, and my server’s more generous hit counter has already established an all-time high this month with another 9 days left (when my last reading was taken), a hit rate that’s on pace to blow by the 40,000 mark (once only dreamed about during my “ttown’s right-wing conspiracy” days on Blogspot) and challenge the 50,000 hit mark for the first time. Obviously I’ve had some success with my forum coverage and also with my expanded links list and Election Calendar (which were part of my second initiative).
On the other hand, I don’t think the Ten Questions (my third initiative) worked out like I’d hoped, particularly on the U.S. Senate side. There’s many an expert who advises candidates not to answer open questions like those I presented; unfortunately these so-called experts think that 30 second commercials are the basis for good campaigning. I think what I’m going to do for the U.S. Senate race now is use the candidate’s own websites to answer these issue-related questions as best I can, although with Kevin Zeese I can supplement his own answers. Fortunately, that’s not going to be too time-consuming as we have just three candidates. If Michael Steele can’t even send his answers to the Baltimore Sun, he’s not going to mess with a website that has just a few hundred readers (for now.) So my thought is that the Ten Questions for candidates of that level was a good try, but likely not useful in statewide elections. I think I’ll resubmit these (with one change since early voting was overturned) to the surviving (and opposed) General Assembly candidates to either change any answers they feel like changing or answering them anew. Ten Questions seemed to work better for local-level races.
The final initiative was devoting some time and coverage to my own campaign. Unlike a website that’s specifically to boost electoral prospects, monoblogue started well before I decided to throw my hat into the ring and (good Lord willing) will continue far into the future. As I’ve stated, I’ve done local newsletters before to keep people in my precinct informed about Central Committee happenings and will do more of that after I’m sworn in. Fortunately monoblogue can cover all of Wicomico County, no more hand delivery! I found out on Thursday night that I’ll officially be sworn in during the fall Maryland Republican Party convention in Annapolis on December 2nd.
Looking back at what I did, I have to say that not finishing last was a pretty good achievement, considering that all of my opponents were a) older and b) have lived and worked in Wicomico County for a period of time, whereas I moved here in October 2004. I started with probably zero name recognition unless you recalled a Letter to the Editor I wrote at one time or another to the Daily Times or knew me from monoblogue. And as stated, my website only covers a few hundred readers, some of whom are either Democrat, independent, or live outside the county. Having no idea what kind of response I’d get, I’m very grateful to the 3,363 voters who had enough confidence in me and my ideas to vote for me. And all the votes counted – if just three fewer people voted for me I would’ve been the cow’s tail, it was that close!
But my goal for the next time is to get about 5,000 votes in the same race, in part because people saw the job I did in helping the Republican Party improve itself here in Wicomico County, and also because there’s more Republicans! Actually, I’d like to improve upon the number of ballots I was voted on to about 65-70%. John Bartkovich finished first because he was on 68.7% of the ballots whereas Ed Heath and I (the tail-enders) finished right about 53%.
However, this is now all past history. My main focus in the next 6 1/2 weeks is the biggest races – governor, U.S. Senator, General Assembly Districts 37 and 38, and Wicomico County Executive. (The County Executive race, needless to say, has been turned on its ear by events over the last 10 days.) Those are ones I’m going to try to cover and analyze in-depth as far as where each candidate stands on main issues involving the Eastern Shore. Because the Sheriff and County Council contests had a lot more play during the primary due to the sheer number of candidates, I can focus a little less on those as many of their positions are already known and previously covered.
I’m also going to try and “fill in the blanks” as far as websites go. I believe I have all of the Maryland statewide candidates linked now. There’s a few left in the General Assembly that I have to get (Jeannie Haddaway, Lowell Stoltzfus if he does one, and possibly one in Senate District 37) but most of my focus for link collection would be on local Wicomico County races as I’m sure some of the local folks will get online too. I also have expanded my Delaware offferings some in the last few days as well. Those are of more limited scope so using those links for further self-guided research will likely have to suffice. Of course, I’ll also check through things as I do the weekly Election Calendar.
Since events during election time can occur without a lot of notice (not to mention I’ll be moving my household and volunteering for headquarters and various campaigns), I’m probably not going to set any sort of schedule in stone for race analysis and such like I did with the Ten Questions, which were generally on set days of the week. The only constant I plan on keeping is Sunday for the Election Calendar and that may yet become flexible, particularly around mid-October when I shift locales.
But I think this is going to be an exciting month and a half as both Maryland and (to a lesser extent) Delaware select their respective representative governments. Of course, after that we’ll have a short holiday lull but then the races in the city of Salisbury will ratchet up after the first of the year and then the prologue to the 2008 Presidential campaign starts up next summer with early straw polls. (That will be Maryland’s only statewide race in 2008 as both of our U.S. Senators will be midterm.)
Needless to say I’m looking forward to serving the Wicomico County Republican Party on their Central Committee and the voting public on monoblogue.
* The way WordPress works, my pages also act as posts and are assigned numbers, plus along the way I’ve deleted a couple of test posts. So this isn’t actually the exact 250th post but its sequential number is 250.
