Too Conservative

The only measure that matters in elections is votes. Conventions are interesting because voters “pledge” to vote for a candidate ahead of time, allowing campaigns to measure votes even before the convention (of course, nothing binds them to voting that way). Therefore, advertising these pledges is a great way for a campaign to say that they’re winning, because those pledges represent actual votes.

Predictably, these claims are subject to interpretation, and in most cases, feature selective reasoning and fuzzy math. Consider the close of filings in the two largest jurisdictions: Fairfax County and Virginia Beach.

Virginia Beach is a perfect example, because at least two campaigns are lying (and I would bet all three are stretching the truth). It’s pretty simple: if three campaigns claim victory in a three-way race, two of them are wrong. Nonetheless, soon after filing closed, we received the following messages (in chronological order):

Foster

Dave Foster, candidate for the Republican nomination for Virginia Attorney General, announced Monday (March 2) that, of the party’s Attorney General candidates, he has filed the most delegates in the City of Virginia Beach

Cuccinelli

Of the 438 delegates filed by today, [Cuccinelli supporters] walked in with 192 forms – more than double any other A.G. candidate.

Brownlee

In Virginia Beach, Team Brownlee filed approximately 200 delegates.  The Dave Foster campaign filed approximately 150, leaving an additional 89 delegates either uncommitted or supporting Ken Cuccinelli.

Of those, the only number we know for sure is the number of forms filed: 438. Cuccinelli claims 192, while Brownlee claims over 200 and claims that Foster filed 150. Of course, none of these totals take into account Bill Bolling, who is running a very aggressive effort to gain delegates, and I’ve heard some reports that Bolling’s campaign itself (not in conjunction with any AG campaign) filed up to half of the 438 in Va Beach. Plus if Patrick Muldoon has any relatives in Va Beach, he could have filed anywhere from 0 to 3 forms. And then there are a healthy portion that simply filed on their own, independent of any campaign.

So who is right? My best guess is no one. Cuccinelli gives specific numbers, but posits that his opponents filed less than a 100 forms each. John Brownlee gives numbers for all of the other candidates, but his belated victory announcement comes after both of the other campaigns claimed victory, and even after Brownlee called Foster to congratulate him for winning Virginia Beach. And Foster just says he won and leaves it at that, though if Foster’s and Cuccinelli’s numbers are where Brownlee says they are, and Brownlee invented the 200 number after the fact, it’s possible his 150 puts him in the lead.

Someone has to win Virginia Beach, but it’s difficult to believe any of the campaigns when they say they win. Ironically, Dave Foster, who didn’t report any specific numbers, ends up the most believable because he can’t be caught stretching the truth. For example, consider Fairfax County. Again, in chronological order:

Cuccinelli

[Cuccinelli's] staff and volunteers walked in with over half of the forms filed by the deadline yesterday, and many of our friends in Fairfax just filed on their own.  So, breaking 70% in Fairfax appears within our reach.  We’ll need a little while to see just how big a margin we’ve got here.

This reminds me of a conversation I had almost a year ago with Boyd Marcus, who has ended up consulting for Dave Foster in this race.  He told me then that no one breaks 60% in Fairfax County in a convention, as there are just too many factions in Fairfax.  Well, we’re going to blow through that number this year.

Our campaign physically handed in approximately three and a half or four times as many delegates as John Brownlee’s campaign, and Dave Foster’s folks did not bring any forms in themselves, rather they relied on people to turn them in one at a time.

[some number crunching]

I would also note that we expect to do substantially better than 2/3 in Fairfax’s final vote, so this is all quite conservative.

Brownlee

Unofficial returns show that 1,594 delegates filed by the Saturday deadline.

We understand that Lt. Governor Bill Bolling’s campaign turned in more than 200 forms.  Approximately 500 were turned in individually; we know many of these are from members of the Team Brownlee Veterans’ Network in Fairfax.  Team Brownlee members directly turned in approximately 300 forms.  Party sources tell us that Senator Cuccinelli’s campaign turned in between 400 and 500 forms.
 
This is very exciting news for Team Brownlee.  The pundits and “Conventional Wisdom” said Fairfax would be a massive, 75%+ win for the Cuccinelli campaign, with Dave Foster taking the balance.  As it stands, no one candidate for Attorney General can claim filing as much as one-third of Fairfax County, and clearly much of this delegation is up for grabs.

Foster

As for Fairfax, the great thing about a county as large as Fairfax is that there is plenty of playing field for everyone.  The Foster campaign posted strong numbers in Fairfax County and Prince William County.

Fairfax is a little better than Virginia Beach because everyone agrees Cuccinelli won his home County. The question is by how much. Cuccinelli, a bit incredulously, is claiming over 70%. As with Virginia Beach, all we know for sure is the number of forms filed, which is roughly 1600.

Cuccinelli claims “over half”, but his supporters are the only ones that believe it. Everything else I’ve heard puts the numbers closer to what Brownlee is reporting, with a bit over 400 forms filed by Cuccinelli. That still puts him in the lead, but gives him 25% of the vote in Fairfax, not 50%.

Now, clearly, many independent filers in Fairfax County will be Cuccinelli supporters, so Cuccinelli may even get to his 50%. There is fuzzy math here, however, with Cuccinelli adding his filed forms with his estimated independent support and treating that as his “locked” support (50%), then adding that independent support a second time to get up to his claim of 70%.

But what good is claiming 70% if no one believes you, or worse, people think you’re lying? Then people start to wonder if campaigns are stretching the truth to gain an edge, or to create a facade of strength around a declining campaign. There’s no real way to prove it one way or another, but the math simply doesn’t add up. Brownlee’s numbers look right, but after claiming over 200 delegates in Virginia Beach, it’s hard to really trust his campaign. One again, Dave Foster comes out the best by simply not making any claims at all.

Unfortunately, this silliness over delegate counts puts them in the same category as debates (everyone claims they won them) and volunteer headcounts (each campaign simply waits for the other to report theirs and adds ten more), which is to say they’re worthless.

At the end of the day, we only know one thing for sure: we’ve filed a lot more forms for 2009 than for 2008, representing 1) how much better our AG candidates are than our Senate candidates were, and 2) how well each of the three candidates (plus Bolling) are working each of the 135 localities in Virginia. No matter who wins, all Republicans have reason to be optimistic about our chances in the Fall.

Previous Looks at the AG Race:

Part 1 covered the inanity of electability arguments.
Part 2 covered why conventions are terrible and why each candidate would benefit from a primary.
Part 3 provided immediate coverage of the Roanoke Debate.
Part 4 was supposed to look at each candidate’s path to victory, but was scrapped (apologies).
Part 5 will be the finale to this run. Stay tuned.

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Mar 18th by VA Blogger