Below The Beltway

Reason’s David Weigel writes about the aftermath of the race between Mark Ellmore and Amit Singh:

We knew pretty early in the night at Amit Singh’s victory party that the candidate would lose. The first hint was nebulous: It was that Singh’s opponent Mark Ellmore, a social conservative who’d been running for two years, had blanketed the district with signs, and that there were areas (especially in Fairfax County, which contained almost half the precincts) with no Singh presence whatsoever. “They needed more visibility,” said Aaron Biterman, who’d voted for Singh then volunteered for Vern McKinley. “We needed more damn signs!” said Singh, tongue planted in cheek.

The second sign was unmissable: Singh was doing worse in his base of Arlington County than Ellmore was doing in Fairfax, and by 8:30 p.m., only Fairfax was out. “I did one canvass in Fairfax County,” said Singh web guru Kevin Chand. “Our volunteers were in their 20s, living on the Orange Line. They didn’t have cars! We did one trip to Reston and that was it.”

As I noted this morning, the lack of a strong organization in a race with such low turnout is, by itself, one of the reasons that Singh wasn’t able to succeed.

The candidate himself, though, cited another reason:

Singh was blunt early in the night when I asked how he felt about the vote. “That mailer with the fake quote killed us,” he said. The mailer in question was an 11th hour hit job that quoted scattered sources, including the blog of Mark Blacknell, to paint Singh as an anti-troop false Republican who refused to vote for John McCain. Singh referred to the current mission in Iraq as “operation baby-sit,” so Ellmore claimed he “insults our military professionals.” Singh was about as disappointed as half the GOP when McCain lucked into the nomination, so he was, obviously, a libertarian who would destroy the party. A picture of Singh and Ron Paul completed the attack.

(…)

Former Republican activist Bill Lockhart, who’d worked for the district’s 2006 candidate (who’d endorsed Singh), was gloomy about the effect of the Ellmore mailer. “Stuff like that can hurt the whole ticket,” Lockhart said. Amit Singh had actually seen Ellmore at the polls and chastised him for the smear; Ellmore put the onus on his 17-year old campaign manager and said he’d apologize after the election.

Okay, let me get this straight. Not only did this guy let a 17 year old run his campaign, but he didn’t bother to keep an eye on what the kid was doing ?

Talk about amateur hour.

Ellmore will be lucky to get 20% of the vote in November.

Along the same lines, The Young Reaganite cites lying and bad luck as the principle reasons Singh lost:

[H]ow did voters find about Mark Ellmore? They didn’t, but rather they learned of Amit Singh;Mark Ellmore lied about him in a mailer. After sending out a mailer composed of lies, he managed to convince voters Amit would not vote for John McCain (read earlier stories) and that he was exactly like Ron Paul (again, not true).

Being blasted like this so late, the Amit team was not able to get out into Fairfax county and Falls Church and meet voters. Mark Ellmore also sent out the false mailers to very random people (a friend of mine and his family all got mailers. Three of them are Democrats and one of them has not even registered). I believe he was able to motivate un-motivator voters with a lie.

I think part of the motivation to vote for Mark Ellmore this year came out of fear of nominating a McCain hating libertarian to congress. Sadly, this fabricated characterization was a extremely large factor leading to Amit’s defeat.

TYR also says this:

My other writer is contemplating whether or not he will be able to support Mark Ellmore in the general. I know for a fact that I cannot at all. My principles mean more to me than anything else. If Mark Ellmore was just a moderate, I probably would vote for him. Mark Ellmore however is more than that. He is a liar and fraud who is willing to do anything to win. This is not the Republican Party I belong to.

Frankly, if I lived in the 8th District, Ellmore wouldn’t be getting my vote either, just for what happened last week.