Ground Game Beats All

This is a good discussion of the Julia Salazar campaign now that it is over. To say that Salazar proved to be a, uh, problematic candidate is a massive overstatement. I mean, someone was funding an unprecedented attack on a state senate candidate and I believe the most likely culprit was someone outraged by her support of BDS, but who knows. And that’s a bunch of BS to go nuclear in a race like this. On the other hand, the Keith Hernandez scandal thing? WTF? I mean, when your bad personal problems include Keith Hernandez, as charming as he may be calling Mets games, that’s some serious red flags. And there were other problems too. The problem with grassroots candidates on the left is that they really aren’t vetted in any meaningful ways, so they can be unstable prevaricators and people don’t find out until it is too late. Of course, at the state political level, that sort of thing isn’t so uncommon.

Anyway, while a lot of her supporters are really disappointed, it made no difference in her race, as she completely demolished her opponent. And the reason is that a good ground game matters a lot more than any scandal in terms of winning a single election. DSA had a great ground game for her, learning from a couple of other failed campaigns in the last couple of years. And this is what you want–a political organization feeling their oats, figuring out what works, finding good candidates and realizing that even when you think you have a good candidate, you need to be really sure.

Plus, in the end, I don’t care too much about whatever weirdness Salazar has going on in her life or even if she isn’t too truthful. She’s going to vote the right way in the New York state senate and if she doesn’t, she will be tossed out of office. As it should be.