Thursday, November 5, 2009

The Sad Stories of Hernandez and Harmer

1.How Judy Chu, Democrat, was handed a seat in the House of Representatives by Republican Execs. Let’s have a look at the final vote:

Teresa Hernandez (R) 4,178
Betty Chu (R) 5,016
David A. Truax (R) 3,020
Christopher M. Agrella (L) 597

Judy Chu (D) 15,338

diff(D-R,L) = 2527 (15,338-12,811)

Question: Why were three Republicans vying for a limited number of Republican voters? Answer: Keystone Cops at work. From the above tabulation, it would seem that even if Hernandez had obtained all the Republican votes, she would have still faced a 3,124 vote deficit.

Question: Could Agrella have been enlisted to support Hernandez?
Answer: Good chance. His main concerns were large government and high taxes. A deal could have been made had the heft of the Republican Party been brought to bear on Mr. Agrella’s concerns.
Question: What are the chances that at least1300 Latinos voted for Judy Chu because of the D on the ticket, after her name? These would be folks who had never voted Republican, but who never heard Hernandez’ message due to the severe lack of funds suffered by the Hernandez Campaign.
Answer: Had her message gotten out, Hernandez could have easily picked up 1300 of the Judy Chu votes. District 32 contains a 2:1 ratio of Latinos versus Asians. The hot-button issues among a large number of Latinos were MORALITY, HONESTY, and ABORTION. Most of the Latinos I talked to while making rounds in the neighborhoods had never heard of Teresa Hernandez. There was a lack of name recognition ---- a deplorable state of affairs.

2. How David Harmer was overlooked by the Keystone Cops.
At the Western CPAC convention, in mid October, a lone individual, Hank Hough, handed out flyers he had prepared and photocopied, on his own, to call attention to the Harmer vs Garamendi race in the Contra Costa region of California (District 10). At some point during the second day of the meeting, an announcement was made to attendees calling for support of Harmer. About a week later, I started hearing about this race on the radio. By then, it was too late.