The Last Word

Today is Election Day in the United States for the midterms, and that means an end to voter outreach. I wound up on the radar of Republican Tiffany Smiley's campaign to challenge Patty Murray for her seat in the United States Senate, and that meant a steady stream of text messages. As one of those text messages helpfully pointed out, whether or not one votes in any given election is a matter of public record. So, presumably, the Smiley campaign recognized that I am what many political types refer to as a "likely voter." Presumably this, and the fact that I live in a very White suburb of Seattle, prompted the campaign outreach, given that conversations with acquaintances didn't reveal a universal outreach effort.

The messages were generally pretty simple, basically doing little more than implying that Senator Murray was helping the wealthy and "special interests" and wasn't interested in helping "families." It was the typical appeal to an unspecified "change" that challengers to incumbents often put forward. For me, the overall effect was a resounding "meh." The fact that Mrs. Smiley's plan lacked any affirmative agenda or details of note meant that there was nothing there to potentially take issue with (because who's against fighting for families), but it made her main qualification seem to be the fact that she wasn't Senator Murray. And if that's the only criteria, then I qualify to be a United States Senator.

Someone running a longshot campaign needs to bring a little more to the table, in my opinion. I could be proven wrong, but I don't think that Senator Murray is in any real danger. If the current Republican establishment felt that there was a significant chance of Mrs. Smiley winning, former President Trump would have likely given her an endorsement, seeking to pad his win rate. The fact that he couldn't be bothered betrays a lack of faith in her prospects.

This is the downside of partisanship, when it comes to elections like this. Given that Washington is considered a solidly Blue state, Mrs. Smiley's campaign could likely be considered somewhat quixotic. But this in in part because she likely couldn't really tailor her message, policy ideas or tactics to the audience that she needed to reach, as doing so would have meant putting a remarkable amount of distance between herself and the broader Republican Party.

For now, I suspect, the nearly 20 text messages I've received over the last four weeks are likely to be the sum total that I'll hear from the Smiley campaign. And while I'll be happy that the campaign isn't blowing up my phone, I think that outreach could have had potential, had it not been so scattershot and last-minute.