This, to me, is the most astounding figure to come out of our local 13th Congressional District election and its accompanying controversy: That Republican Vern Buchanan outspent Democrat Christine Jennings by $4 million ($6 million vs. $2 million) and only managed to come up with a 400 vote margin, which means Buchanan spent about $10,000 for each of the 400 votes that gave him his victory — which is still in doubt since approximately 18,000 voters in Sarasota County who used touch-screen voting machines either didn’t vote for either candidate or didn’t have their votes recorded correctly. Some of our louder local Republicans are claiming this undervote is the result of people not wanting to vote for either candidate, and some of our louder Democrats are talking about a Republican vote-stealing conspiracy. I tend to believe in stupidity more than in conspiracies, myself. And I’m happy to let Buchanan “win” the election and move on. Here’s why:

• According to opensecrets.org, Buchanan spent $3,675,000 of his own money on his campaign. I doubt that he’ll be willing to spend that much to get re-elected in two years, while I am sure that Democrats will be more than happy to spend at least as much as the $2 million they donated to the Jennings campaign to get rid of Buchanan in 2008. So Buchanan will be an out-of-step, one-termer who is part of the Congressional minority. At worst, he won’t be able to do much harm.
• Some people who have gotten wealthy in flaky ways have changes of heart and decide to make up for earlier transgressions, a la Bill Gates. It’s possible that Buchanan will realize that being nice to poor and middle-class Americans is a good way to make up for some of the marginal business deals he’s pulled off over the years. If Jesus or other advisors get Buchanan to stop being as “me first, me second, me third, screw you” as he has been for most of his adult life, he may actually become a decent Congressman. And if he does, he may be able to stay in Congress without spending millions of dollars on each election. (If he changes enough, I might even vote for him myself in 2008. We’ll see.)
• We may have a revote, at least in Sarasota County, that will put Jennings in Congress. If that happens, there will be so much Republican anger, and so much Reublican effort to beat her in 2008, that I suspect she would be the one-termer.
• Another possibility is that a revote will give Buchanan a larger margin than he has now, but Buchanan and his staff are fighting a revote so hard that it looks like they don’t think a majority of voters want him in office, which is sad. Imagine spending your one term in Congress being known as the guy who won as a result of voting machine error, not because of a legitimate election victory!

The wisest long-term course for the Democratic Party would be to concede the 13th District to the Republicans this time around, and to start looking now for a 2008 candidate who looks like a shining light compared to Buchanan’s sputtering candle.

I’m personally in kind of a “whatever” mode about all this. The political notable who has made the most sensible comment — possibly the only sensible comment about how we can prevent future questions about whether people didn’t vote for either candidate in a high-profile race by choice or had their choices lost by defective voting machines or badly-designed ballots — is State Senator Mike Bennett (R-Construction Industry). A Sarasota Herald-Tribune article by Jeremy Wallace contained these words:

State Sen. Mike Bennett, R-Bradenton, said the state should also look at adding a line for each race in which voters could choose “none of the above.” Bennett said that would help determine when people are trying to intentionally skip a race.

Amen, Senator Bennett. Amen.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 17th, 2006 at 8:52 am and is filed under Bradenton/local, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.