Friday, May 10, 2019

Gahan's eclipse: I got your haymaker, bumpkin dearest. You have the cash, but the math's with the resistance.

Perhaps the DemoDisneyDixiecrats opted to meet on election night at the Elks Lodge instead of the Knights of Columbus because a tepid crowd of appointees and beak wetters looks bigger in a small room.

Contrary to Team Gahan's labored claims that God herself intervened to prevent enemies from "rolling back" his addiction to TIF areas, a look at the numbers shows the Veneer King is steadily losing ground in spite of winning the primary.

Following are primary results from 2011, 2015 and 2019.

Total votes 3,713



2011: Total votes 3,713
2015: Total votes 3,349
2019: Total votes 3,058

In 2019, the supposedly all-powerful Gahan tallied a whopping 142 more primary votes than he did in 2011, and he hemorrhaged almost 300 voters as opposed to 2015.

Meanwhile almost three times more Republicans showed up to vote in the 2019 primary than in 2011: 1,028 versus 382. The overall electoral trend remains an erosion of voter identification with Democrats and a corresponding rise for Republicans.

The final general election scorecard in 2015 looked like this. Gahan lost approximately 12% of the vote from 2011.

Jeff M. Gahan (D) 3,527 (52.8%)
Kevin Zurschmiede (R) 2,695 (40.3%)
Roger Baylor (I) 462 (6.9%)

For his rematch in the 2019 primary David White felt it was necessary to conclusively establish the fundamental ethical corruption of Kool Aid Gahanism before extolling his own qualifications and platform.

Meanwhile Gahan spent the spring calibrating his fallacious "balanced budget, no new taxes" campaign against Mark Seabrook for the general election. The Democrats distributed enough loaded Rice Krispies Treats to glide through against White, but the point of Gahan's intrinsically crooked bile is no longer in doubt.

From where I'm sitting, few of White's supporters will vote for Gahan. They may sit out the general election, but it's reasonable to assume they'll go for Seabrook as a bloc. Combining the long-term trends of attrition with those 300 votes Gahan lost on Tuesday, his autumn ceiling probably is 3,000 votes -- and this isn't factoring the votes taken from the Democrats by Dan Coffey's probable independent candidacy.

In short, not only can Seabrook win in November, but he could also win convincingly. To be sure, Gahan will have $175,000 of special interest money and he'll be willing to spend every last cent of it to keep his signature pay-to-play gravy train rolling. 

But I think the math has turned against Dear Leader.

On primary evening at the Elks, our Bunker Elvis prattled on about the "haymakers" launched against him. Just remember that owing to the newspaper's slothful complicity and the partisan nature of primary elections, Bunker Elvis easily sidestepped debate and was allowed to avoid discussion of his myriad ethical lapses.

Let's close this rumination with another tune from the wonderful original recording of Jesus Christ Superstar. Take it away, Murray Head.

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