J. M. Ivler, a friend of OC Politics Blog and an avowed non-fan of Los Al Mayor Troy Edgar, has been crunching numbers for his city and came up with the following analysis of the 72nd Assembly race. It’s worth sharing.
====================================================
Imagine you have been on City Council for six years. In that time you have spent two years serving as the Mayor of the city. You have been the leader of the majority for the last four years. You decide to run for higher office, and you invest a great deal of your own money as well as other peoples in that effort. What would be a good predictor of how well you might do in an election?
The telling part of any election is how the people who know you best voted for you. Those people in this case would be the residents of Los Alamitos, the person is Troy Edgar and the race was AD-72.
The actual breakdown of the Los Alamitos electoral map is:
|
Precinct |
Registered |
Ballots Cast |
Percent |
Allen |
Edgar |
||
|
33117 |
1018 |
619 |
60.8% |
295 |
249 |
Highlands |
|
|
33121 |
906 |
512 |
56.5% |
265 |
176 |
Suburbia & Old Dutch |
|
|
33122 |
1023 |
389 |
38.0% |
200 |
116 |
Apt Row (East) |
|
|
33124 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|||
|
33126 |
1022 |
622 |
60.9% |
343 |
198 |
Carrier Row |
|
|
33128 |
1145 |
525 |
45.9% |
244 |
159 |
Apt Row (West) |
|
|
33130 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|||
|
33134 |
141 |
81 |
57.4% |
26 |
36 |
Parkewood |
|
|
33601 |
1791 |
908 |
50.7% |
403 |
368 |
Greenbrook; College Park N; Woodcrest |
|
|
33901 |
83 |
45 |
54.2% |
21 |
23 |
||
|
TOTALS |
1797 |
1325 |
Okay, it’s clear that Troy Edgar lost to Travis Allen in Los Alamitos. We can see that the rental areas of the community had low voter turnout, as was expected, but that elsewhere throughout the city the voter turnout was all greater than 50% of the voters. but can we simplify this table a bit and show how well each candidate did as the percentage of the vote?
|
Precinct |
Allen |
Edgar |
|
33117 |
47.66% |
40.23% |
|
33121 |
51.76% |
34.38% |
|
33122 |
51.41% |
29.82% |
|
33124 |
||
|
33126 |
55.14% |
31.83% |
|
33128 |
46.48% |
30.29% |
|
33130 |
||
|
33134 |
32.10% |
44.44% |
|
33601 |
44.38% |
40.53% |
|
33901 |
46.67% |
51.11% |
As we can see, we have a case where Mr. Edgar lost all but the two smallest precincts in Los Alamitos. Losing even the area where his home is located. In fact, in only two areas of Los Alamitos did Mr. Edgar actually get more votes, and that was a total of 12 votes between those two districts.
So, those voters that knew Mr. Edgar best chose by 65% to NOT vote for six term council member and twice Mayor Edgar.
A great deal was made of Romney and Ryan losing their perspective states, but when you have been on the City Council for six years and been Mayor twice in that time period, and were Mayor at the time of the vote, and you can’t carry the city you represent and live in, not even carrying the neighborhood you live in, that says a great deal about the failure, not of the campaign, but the politician.
That Travis Allen was only able to win by 11% when 35% of the City of Los Alamitos chose to NOT vote for Edgar shows that Edgar’s campaign was amazing at fooling those that did not know the Los Alamitos Mayor. So, kudos must be given to the Edgar campaign staff and their valiant efforts to make a man who couldn’t win the vote in his city palatable to the rest of the Assembly districts voters.
— J. M. Ivler
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That’s a pretty poor showing for a six figure campaign, much of it funded with Troy Edgar’s own money. Why Edgar’s performance was so dismal is problematic — perhaps he lacked a ground campaign (it was observed his opponent blanketed certain areas of the District with motivated precinct walkers in late October/early November).
Perhaps it was plain inexperience on his Campaign Manager’s part — Brett Barbre‘s is known for his grimy lobbying skills, but apparently not much else. Perhaps it was an over reliance on his long list of endorsers — mostly GOP regulars he hit up early in the campaign that weren’t aware of his extremely abrasive personality and casual relationship with truth-telling (and ended up giving him no contributions).
Perhaps it was a lot of skeletons in his closet that came out as folks like Ivler looked into his relationship with a Los Al trash hauler and how they ended up with the city’s business by NOT being low bidder for it — this ended up costing the city $6.5 million. Perhaps it was Measure DD — a deceptive tax increase the Edgar authored and placed on the ballot while he was telling folks at the exact same time he would NOT be raising their taxes — but he then wouldn’t back that up by signing the ATR Tax Pledge as his opponent had.
Perhaps it was his lying on his Federal Campaign Reporting forms for inappropriate expenses during his failed congressional campaign as reported by the OC Weekly’s R. Scott Moxley. Maybe it was getting creamed in a one-on-one debate that he initially refused to participate in.
The Fountain Valley Patch reported Tuesday that Edgar’s campaign would be issuing a statement following his 10.8%, 12663 vote landslide loss. We’re looking forward to that — maybe Edgar’s got some answers — now two days later. Or maybe he’ll again just lead with his chin.
Edgar had to blame someone other than himself or his campaign manager, and justify spending his childrens’ college educations for a five-figure job — so why not the “Top Two” election system that was engineered in a back room deal by two Republicans, Schwarzenegger and Abel Maldonado.
Edgar lost because he’s a conniving opportunist who thought he could walk over a collection of “amateurs” who would be overwhelmed by the presence of a small town Mayor with a pile of endorsements from GOP regulars who couldn’t wait to see who else was running. None of these guys apparently gave him a dime, so there’s an indication of the sincerity and superficiality behind their recommendation. His endorsements didn’t equate to the 13k+ votes he lost by, and 11% shellacking.
What you saw in the initial report above was part of a much larger report.
If you saw the OC Register article on the race you will see that Mr. Edgar claimed that the loss was based on ballot name placement (ballot position).
The above shows that people who knew the name Edgar still chose to vote against it when presented with a total unknown as his opponent. This shows that for a non low information voter they were voting no on ballot position, but either for Allen or against Edgar.
There is a commonly held belief that the low information voter will pick the first name that is on the ballot, and for some races that is even true. For instance, in the primary for this AD that was considered a truism for the (D)’s in the race.
BIA Solutions in the report from which the above was taken looks at the fact that the ballot position argument fails in this case. In areas where Edgar was known he clearly was beaten by Allen, Yet in the one area where Edgar and Allen were both totally unknown Edgar defeated Allen (the only area by the way). In Santa Ana neither candidate was well known. Edgar still appeared as the second name on the ballot, yet he won. This, like Los Alamitos, Rossmoor and Seal Beach (places where Edgar was known and he lost by substantial margins) shows that the ballot position excuse is really not very accurate. A much better case could be made that in locations with low information voters that the ballot designation as one candidate as a successful politician and the other a “businessman” may have been more powerful than ballot position in generating votes from low information voters.
BIA Solutions has been hired to generate a reports analyzing this campaigns for AD-72 and the results from the election. The first of the reports will be posted at http://www.letsfixlosal.com within the next 7-10 days and deals with raw votes and their implications. A second report will be filed detailing the effectiveness of the money spent by the candidates based on the candidate filings (public information) and requests to the candidates committees to explain financial resource allocation.
A third report looking at low information voters and motivators from the campaigns is under negotiation. This will look at the five components that make up the low information voter profile to see how each of these components affected the low information voter’s perception of the candidates on election day.
We might speculate that Edgar’s win in SanTana was due to his endorsement by their Mayor. Otoh, given his 11-point loss, his many endorsements, especially from a lot of GOP regulars like Rohrabacher and Royce, didn’t carry him at all.
Edgar touted those endorsements, but it turned out he didn’t have the important ones — like two Democrat Primary candidates (one Viet) and Van Tran’s. He also lost one in Mike Schroeder.
The Pulido endorsement was the work of Edgar’s consultant, Brett Barbre. I tried but could not change Pulido’s mind. Luckily the right candidate won!
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