If you can stand a short post. I’ll try to get some EMS posts in this week, although it’s been pretty boring at work. In a few weeks we’ll have the new ACLS guidelines to pick apart, so that should be good for some lively debate!

An acquaintance of mine ran for local office on the Republican ticket. He was hoping to win yesterday’s primary and go on to challenge the Democrat incumbent. He did all the right things, he engaged people, he went to meetings large and small, he put up signs, he got people such as me to put up signs and even hold signs at polling places. His primary opponent barely campaigned, signs were scarce, no one even knew who he was. My friend was feeling pretty good about his prospects going into yesterday’s election and even early yesterday evening. Despite his well run campaign he lost. Big. In fact, if there was a slaughter rule in politics, they would have called the election by about 9:30 PM. His opponent won large in towns that he never even went to, where there wasn’t one sign with his name on it, where no one stood outside the polls holding his signs. Why did this guy beat my friend so handily?

Here’s my suspicion. Skullduggery.

I think that his potential Democrat opponent, having no primary opponent to run against simply contacted his supporters (he’s an incumbent so there are many) and told them to pick up a Republican ballot and vote for my acquaintance’s opponent. The opponent has no money, so he will not be able to run a good campaign at all. The Democrat incumbent will likely walk back into office with up to 80% of the ballots cast. Had my acquaintance won, the incumbent likely still would have won, but it would have been a closer fight and and the challenger might even have pulled it off in this anti-incumbent year. It’s not fair, but it is politics.

Which brings me to the Delaware primary election. Was the same dynamic going on there? It would be harder to do that sort of thing in Delaware since, unlike Massachusetts, you have to declare you party affiliation months before the actual election. It would take some long range planning to do accomplish a cross over upset such as that, but it’s not impossible. Overnight, Delaware went from a likely Republican pick up to a likely safe seat for the Democrats. It remains to be seen if the people who supported O’Donnell in the primary stick with her or if it’s even enough to win the general election.

Once again, it’s not fair, but it is politics.