Conventional Wisdom or Wildcard Tuesday?

Throughout this campaign I have labored under the perception that I couldn't win because I did not have a personal fortune and couldn't raise a political fortune for the campaign. No matter how true the dollar implications were, it always irritated me that the conventional wisdom tended to become political truth. Several months ago I fell victim to using this same analysis in the GOP Lt. Governor's race by proclaiming Senator Robert Pittenger the presumptive winner based on his personal fortune and his opponents lack of money.

Greg Dority, one of the GOP candidates for Lt. Governor without the money took exception to my conclusion. I confess that Greg's point was well taken and I had fallen into the trap of assuming that money is the end all - be all of campaign victory. Greg reminded me tonight at the Johnston County Reagan Day dinner that I had promised to blog on the error of my ways. And I am.

Today's N&O ran an interesting, albeit painful, full page money analysis of the races for Governor and Lt. Governor. The chart pointed out that I will be outspent in aggregate by about 20 to 1 by my three main rivals for governor in the primary. Likewise, Greg and Jim Snyder will be outspent by about 200 to 1 in the race for Lt. Governor. So do any of us sans millions have any chance of winning on Tuesday? Maybe.

For all the talk about huge turnout, I don't see it happening in the GOP primary. My sense is that the only people voting in our primary will be those who've got a dog in the fight in either one of the statewide races or in a hot local primary. And that means that most will have some passing knowledge of who all the candidates are and a lot of that information will come from the media or free internet info - not the 30 second soundbites on TV, the robo calls from marginal celebrities, or slick mailings.

In fact, these races may be decided by the OWTH voters - a term I've recently coined which stands for "Oh what the hell." These OWTH voters in some indeterminate number will vote on Tuesday and while in the voting booth, look at a race and mutter: "Oh what the hell...I'll vote for...." What those voters base that decision on is anybody's guess. But they might be old hockey fans who recall fondly that Bobby Orr was the greatest hockey player ever or that Greg Dority was the guy who played and coached at Carolina (although Matt Doherty's coaching gig might cost Greg votes).

Regardless, we're less than 72 hours from finding out. But don't count out a surprise or two regardless of all the money. Elections aren't over until they count the votes.

Lessons Learned in Iowa

Last nights political show in Iowa was pretty darn riveting for anyone interested in politics - and of course, I am. One of the best jobs at analyzing what really happened was by Laura Leslie on her blog Isaac Hunter's Tavern. She poses some very interesting questions and makes some very cogent points about the primary results. Now if we could only get her as interested in the governor's race in North Carolina......

Anyway, I took several very encouraging lessons from last night's results that from my perspective are positives for my campaign. Mike Huckabee's win really was stunning considering how badly he was outspent. Thus lesson number 1 is that maybe money is really not THAT important in a small turnout primary. Yeh, it helps - and I'm sure Mike would have loved to have more of it - not just for Iowa but also New Hampshire, South Carolina, etc. But big money didn't win because ultimately voters took the time and effort to really check out the candidates.

The second lesson is that Senator Obama and Governor Huckabee really are about change and really do believe that the country needs to lower the partisan divide that is killing us. And it's obvious that voters in Iowa believed their message.

So while it's a bit of a stretch to compare the status of the Orr campaign with the Obama Express and Huck's Truck, both of which rolled through the competition in Iowa, I do believe there are similarities. Like Mike our campaign is going to be outspent. Like both Obama and Huckabee my message of change and working together will have the opportunity to resonate with voters once the focus turns to the governor's race. And the great thing about the North Carolina primary - I don't have to go to New Hampshire immediately following it.