CityHallNews.com

Editorial:

You've Got to Be in It to Win It

Imagine how different this year's elections could have been.

If Alan Hevesi had had a campaign operation in place when the allegations about his wife's driver first arose—instead of a skeleton staff and no campaign spokesman—the firestorm would almost certainly have easily been avoided. Not a week, and certainly not a month, would have gone by with the accusations and the rumors slowly snowballing. A good campaign consultant actively on the case from the outset could probably have quashed the whole thing. Hevesi would have been on the air before, and not after, the polls started to dip, he could have avoided becoming the great, embarrassing story of this election year. He might have won anyway, and by a whopping margin, but his fate is far from certain.

Or imagine that instead of Christopher Callaghan, state Republicans had decided to run a candidate whose qualifications for the office, or at least the campaign trail, were a little stronger—especially when the office strikes at fiscal management, a core principle for the party. Maybe Scott Vanderhoef would have run, or Andrew Eristoff. Or John Faso.

Then, when the Hevesi scandal broke, voters and editorial boards and good government groups would have felt a little more comfortable wandering off the plantation. They may not have wanted Hevesi, but the Republicans failed to provide a realistic alternative.

There is a simple lesson here, so simple it almost does not need to be said. As the state's political dynamics change, Democrats and Republicans alike would be wise to learn from this year's comptroller race. Always have a campaign staff, even when the path to November looks like the yellow brick road. And even in long shot races, always run a credible candidate. Convincing good, credible men and women to pour months of their lives into races that could never be won can be hard, but politics means actual commitment to winning. No one knows who is going to stumble, what is going to explode.

Just ask Chris Carney, the new Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania's 10th District. He just beat Don Sherwood, a four-term congressman who did not even get a challenger in 2002 or 2004. But this year, Carney jumped in as the underdog and ran hard. He probably would have lost anyway, had Sherwood not paid a half million–dollar settlement to a former mistress whom he once choked for fun. Voters looked for an alternative, and found Carney. Elsewhere in Pennsylvania, when GOP Rep. Curt Weldon found himself the subject of an investigation into the above-the-sheets kind of influence peddling, voters wanted something else, and found it in Retired Admiral Joe Sestak, who can now carpool with Carney down to Washington in January. They are two of the new members of Congress who helped flip the House into their party's control, all because they happened to be real candidates running real races, despite initially low odds.

Amazing what can happen when people actually take the idea of running for office seriously.