Posted on 05/02/2006 9:34:31 PM PDT by Congressman Billybob
This is the Fifth and Final - for now - Report on the Campaign for the 11th District in NC. The eight-term Congressman, Charles Taylor, has defeated me for the nomination of the Republican Party. However, Mr. Taylor's career as a Member of Congress is now over.
That paradoxical conclusion is not a matter of my opinion. It is based on observations of lifelong residents in western Carolina who've been active in politics most of their adult lives. Consider the parameters of this race:
Charles Taylor is a long term incumbent who worked his way up the ladder to a position on the Appropriations Committee of the House. His newsletters back to the District for years have featured the amounts of money garnered for various entities and local governments. Mr. Taylor had the apparent support of every Republican elected official in western Carolina. And he had effectively unlimited funds, in light of the fact that he loaned his own campaign slightly less than $990,000 in the last election cycle to have sufficient funds to win. All that loaned money has since been repaid to Mr. Taylor from on-going fundraising, so he is in a position to do the same thing in this election year.
In addition, Mr., Taylor had both a professional staff as a Member of Congress, and a volunteer staff of outsiders, to assist him in campaigning as he approached the primary. According to his Federal Election Commission filings, Mr. Taylor spent $255,000 before the primary election.
By contrast, I had no professional staff, and a very limited volunteer staff. I have never held any public elective office. My FEC filings show I spent less than $24,000, prior to this election.
You can understand why knowledgeable political observers told me I'd be fortunate to break 10% of the total vote in the Republican primary. One observer stated that if I "did take 20%, Taylor would be finished as a viable candidate for re-election." The total vote in the Republican primary was 32,845 as of 12:16 a.m., Wednesday. I received 19.8% of that vote. The results have been fairly consistent among the 15 counties in the District, and over time since first votes were reported at 8:08 pm yesterday. So, this result should hold up as the remaining votes in the District are reported.
In a split District where a winning Republican has to hold his base, more than break even among independents, and draw a few votes from conservative Democrats, Taylor's 20% leakage against me in the primary tells the local experts that Taylor cannot win the general election this year.
The first independent poll of the 11th District, probably by the Asheville Citizen-Times, will measure the race between Mr. Taylor and Heath Shuler, a one-time football player and first time candidate for public office, who won the Democrat primary today. If that poll, six months before the election, shows Shuler significantly ahead, then the conclusions of the experts who talked to me will be confirmed.
The bottom line has turned out as I described in my Fifth Report on the Campaign, before the primary. Either Congressman Taylor will conclude that he cannot win the general election this year and withdraw -- as Congressman DeLay did in Texas this year. Or, the leaders of the Republican Party, both locally and nationally, will compel Taylor to withdraw -- as Senator Torricelli was forced to do in New Jersey in 2006. This is NOT a year in which the Republicans can afford to throw away a seat in Congress because their current nominee cannot recognize defeat staring him in the face.
So, my campaign will not end at this point. It will go into semi-hibernation until such time as the Republican nomination in this District needs to be filled by the decision of the 11th District Republican Committee.
I hope that all of you are gratified by the results obtained so far, on the resources and skills available. I hope you will support me in the quiet effort to be prepared, in case there's a change in the Republican nomination. And I hope you will support me again, should I be the new Republican nominee.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this primary, and possibilities beyond that.
John
John / Billybob
I wish you well in future endeavors.
I think you're right about Charlie Taylor being finished. My hope is that he drops out of the race. If he does that, how would the GOP nominee be chosen?
Congrats to you for having the fortitude to run against one of the Hill Appropriators (read: pork addicts). And best of luck in the future.
Cheers.
Why not accept your defeat gracefully and endorse the winner?
Keep going of course! You can move here and I will gladly vote for you! :-)
"I received 19.8% of that vote."
Against an intrenched incumbent, that's great.
Congratulations my friend. We need more Americans like you. Try again.
no dems
I see. Well you failed to get 80% of the primary votes so I am wondering why you feel your 20% would translate to victory in the general election. Then again, Free Republic is not making much sense lately so I guess hope springs eternal.
No matter what happens in the future, you can always hold yourself in the knowledge that when others pointed fingers, complained, whined and criticized, YOU DID SOMETHING.
You are a man of ACTION, and win or lose, that sets you apart from the herd. Respect is worth a lot more than love, and my respect you have.
You may be right but I am still wondering how you would parlay 20% into 51% in November. You are also close to accusing Tom Delay of being guilty of corruption which is over the line in my opinion.
Well done John! A win, of course, would have been the preferred outcome, but against an incumbent who has held office for years and won multiple elections you made significant inroads and positioned yourself well for the future. As you say, the future may come sooner than later. Congratulations, my hat is off to you.
You are of course free to not answer the above question, or deflect it, but I thought I should ask, so that you have something on the record, as a response, or non response.
Sorry, Billybob, but 20% leakage is nothing for an incumbent in a primary. Anyone can get 20 percent, just look at the no-namers who run against other House incumbents.
If you'd gotten 35 percent or more, then I'd be interested. Taylor's got a tough race ahead, but I don't think your showing is particularly discouraging for him.
Let me see if I understand this reasoning.
A guy who gets 80% of the GOP primary vote is going to be asked to step down so a guy who got 20% of the GOP Primary vote can take his place. And this 20% guy is supposed to beat the Democrat who won his primary?
What am I missing?
Nifong moves into the district.
I wish you well in your future endeavors.
Although I was not in your district, and soon will leave this state entirely, I hope you will continue in your efforts to return elected officials to their primary duty, which is representational government, elected by and for individuals, not industries, groups, or various unions.
I highly value your thoughtful opinions and comments on issues that affect us all, as individuals.
I did so before I moved to NC, and will continue to do so when I am "back home".
For what it's worth, IMHO, we all desperately need people like you to continue to seek public office.
Please don't stop trying!
Pay no attention to the scoffers, John. You took twenty percent away from him, an incumbent, with a fraction of the money he had available. He very well could drop out, or be 'asked' to. If the Republican party at the state and national level has a shred political acumen left, they would take a long look at this race.
Good job!
LOL. You're kidding, right? You don't have the grace to hang it up and endorse him, or at least go away quietly? You sound like Al Gore. Taylor's not going anywhere.
That paradoxical conclusion is not a matter of my opinion.
"Paradoxical conclusion?" Sounds a bit more like a delusional conclusion to me.
I spent less than $24,000
That's only one of the reasons why you got your @$$ kicked. The other primary reasons are 1) you didn't do any serious campaigning, you know, like knocking on virtually every door in your district, the kind of thing that most candidates with minimal funding routinely do, and 2) you're unelectable unless you live in Ron Paul's district and he retires, and even that's doubtful.
knowledgeable political observers told me I'd be fortunate to break 10%
Any "knowledgeable political observer" would have told you that anyone with a pulse will get around 20% of the primary vote from the perpetual-malcontent segment against any long-time incumbent. I'd guess that at least 95% of the people who voted for you don't have the slightest idea who you are or what you stand for, they just know that you're not Taylor.
So, my campaign will not end at this point.
Why? Ego? Face it. It's over. There's always 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020. Name recognition will set in at some point.
It will go into semi-hibernation
When wasn't it hibernating? Sitting at a keyboard plinking out posts on the internet doesn't count as serious campaigning.
I hope you will support me again, should I be the new Republican nominee.
Put down the bong and get real. Write an amicus brief or two. You'll probably feel better.
But, congratulations on losing your poorly-run joke of a vanity race and giving Shuler a better chance of winning by bad-mouthing Taylor when you had no chance of winning! Way to go!
It's something when the DEM candidate is Heath Shuler. This is not by any means an unknown on the DEM side if it's the Heath Shuler I'm thinking of. Shuler will win it pretty easy. He is pretty well liked in his home state and the one directly east as well where he played college football :>} Shuler can win this race on popularity alone.
This one isn't gonna be about party it's going to be about the name. You can bet on it. It's hard to defeat an icon. He's also has a real estate agency with his name on it. Who knows he may be a lot more conservative than the RINO. I don't know enough about the race to know his platform to say one way or the other.
Well, I guess like Alan Keyes you ran for the election.
Good luck on your future endeavors.
You did very well, Congressman Billybob. Congratulations.
In theory I agree with you, but this is ALWAYS true with primaries. Primaries always provide insight for the other side in the general election.
It is always a two way street. Both party primaries provide insight for the side. Look at the Dem results:
Heath Shuler DEM 29,185
Michael Morgan DEM 9,915
Morgan received 25% of the votes in the Dem primary. Did Morgan not provide ammunition for Taylor to use against Shuler in the general election?
Blaming Armor for exposing Taylor's weak points hinges on the assumption that Shuler would have been too stupid to discover the issues himself. We may not like him, but we can all agree that Shuler is not stupid.
I guess you missed my point, because you left it out of your quotation. Here it is again:
But, congratulations on losing your poorly-run joke of a vanity race and giving Shuler a better chance of winning by bad-mouthing Taylor when you had no chance of winning! Way to go!
Now the sore loser pulls out plan B. I can't wait for plans C, D and E.
I never quote personal attacks.
But back to the substance of the omitted portion, in what way was Armor's campaign poorly run?
What would you have done differently?
There's a Taylor/Abramoff connection that certain parties think will cause him to have to drop out of this election.
But then again who knows. I'll make you a wager. If I'm correct, then next time I'm through Ashville, you can buy me a cup of coffee at one of the Java houses in the university district. If I'm wrong, I'll do the same for you. Deal?
Michael Morgan was total moonbat leftist whose main issues were legalization of (a) drugs; (b) blackjack; and (c) illegals. I doubt the votes he got mean anything much beyond name recognition (Shuler's is still not that great), and there's certainly no doubt that anyone who voted for Morgan on his issues will not be voting for Taylor, but is probably an ironclad Shuler vote (anti-Taylor vote) in the general election.
Do you think the Armor voters will vote for Shuler?
Never? One article? Really? Care to explain this:
To: rocksblues
Mollohan is as crooked as a dog's hind leg, as they say hereabouts.
[snip]
Meantime, the man I'm running against, Charles Taylor from NC, has done all the things that Mollohan has done, just not in numbers quite as large. Millions, but not as many millions.
[snip]
19 posted on 04/21/2006 11:50:47 PM EDT by Congressman Billybob (www.ArmorforCongress.com) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]
Or, how about this:
Interview With John Armor, Republican Candidate in NC-11
Charles Taylor, Armor emphasized, has a long history of ethical problems that could become criminal problems.
[snip]
Armor asserted that "Assuming he [Taylor] survives an ethics investigation, and there are multiple 5 million dollar gaps in what he filed [with the FEC]," Taylor's fiscal inconsistencies could lead to "criminal prosecutions".
I can post more if you wish. Nah, you didn't bad-mouth him at all. Only just about everytime you opened your mouth on the internet or in an interview.
Taylor signed those Reports under penalties of perjury, and I quoted them accurately. No one in Taylor's camp has suggested that a single fact, name, date or number I cited was the slightest bit inaccurate.
Why would Taylor bother responding to a bug they don't consider worth squashing? If you had made a splash with 5 or 10 good ideas for the district that got some publicity, they might have responded to what you had to say.
As for the rest of your allegations, time and circumstance will answer them. Observe and learn.
I have "observed and learned." I notice that you don't deny that "circumstances," namely your routine and resounding defeat, have already demonstrated that conducting an "internet" vanity campaign doesn't amount to squat. Great for the ego, maybe gets you some play on message boards, but other than that, well, what can I say.
And you seem to think that I was stating my own conclusions.
No, I pointed out that the "paradoxical conclusion" seemed to be delusional.
Your knowledge of the politics of this area is derived how?
Why would whether or not I have any knowledge whatsoever of your area matter? I'm not commenting on the "politics of" your "area," I'm commenting on you and your actions, or lack thereof. Voters everywhere seem to detect BS equally well, and the voters of your area have spoken. Loudly.
So, let me congratulate you on your stunning loss again. Fortunately, it's highly likely that you and your "campaign" will soon be forgotten by the voters, and hopefully it hasn't contributed to a loss of a Republican House seat.
Well, voter turnout was extraordinarily low for this primary election. That says to me that people didn't much care, and knew that Taylor would win the primary.
Since Taylor accumulated 80% of the vote in the GOP primary, it would take some major catastrophe for the GOP to substitute another candidate for the general election.
I note that the loser of the DEM primary recieved more votes than you did on the GOP side, as well.
If you wish the district to be represented in Washington by a Republican, I advise you to endorse Taylor as soon as possible. If you do not, and you continue to malign him on the internet, there will be a DEM from your district in Washington after the general election.
Does Taylor have skeletons in his closet? I wouldn't be surprised. Most congresscritters do. Will the Abramoff thing sink him? I doubt it very much.
But, it's your decision, of course. You can continue to malign Taylor and get a DEM as a congressman or you can do the right thing and simply endorse him or say nothing.
It's up to you Billybob. This 2006 election is going to be a critical one. You can either help to maintain a GOP majority or you can help to establish a DEM majority. Which is it going to be?
In any case, to speak to the topic of the thread, I will be extraordinarily surprised if Taylor resigns. The way Taylor wins tough elections is he waits until the last six weeks and then dumps however much money into his campaign that he needs to win, and to date it's worked. I rather doubt he'll see himself as more vulnerable than in 2000 and 2002 when he had major allegations of tax evasion (though Sam Neill was a far inferior challenger).
Besides that, however, I would venture that John Armor (Billybob) is gonna have a really huge uphill climb to push Tom Apodaca, Wilma Sherrill, Nathan Ramsey, Carl Mumpower, Joe Dunn, etc, etc out of the way for the GOP nomination if it comes open.
You lost me here. If Taylor has done something criminally wrong, it is not "bad-mouthing" to attempt to expose his crimes. If Taylor is innocent, then Taylor would have the option to sue for slander.
You are making an awfully good argument for hiding Taylor's misdeeds under the rug.
Key word, that.
Since, at this point, there's nothing beyond mere allegations, which anyone can make, the entirety consists of bad-mouthing.
Makes for a wonderfully positive campaign, huh? I'm sure it inspired the voters.
I never "bad-mouthed Taylor." I wrote and published exactly one article that pointed out five different million-dollar and up errors in hie Reports filed with the Ethics Committee.
Which is quite obviously not true, as the above quotes demonstrated.
Where do you live?
Are you now working, or have you ever worked for the Taylor campaign?
Or maybe you work within or for the GOP party?
Or possibly is this just some Internet personal flame war?
Just curious.....
Thanks-
Or maybe I should say that I doubt Taylor sees himself as much more vulnerable than in 2000 and in 2004. Although early in 2002 it seemed he may be, since the late-breaking ethics allegations from 2000 might've had more time to sink in, Neill's campaign never really got off the ground in 2002, as he was rightly written off by just about everyone, since he couldn't seal the deal in 2000 (or even make it all that close).
Taylor probably doesn't see himself as much more vulnerable this year than in 2004 against Patsy Keever. Patsy Keever was a far more experienced campaigner by comparison to Heath Shuler. She was from the population center (Buncombe Co) whereas Heath Shuler is from Waynesville, and is very slightly subject to the 'carpet-bagger' charge since he had settled in Knoxville TN until he decided to run against Taylor (I doubt that'd make any difference though).
Keever's campaign didn't really sink until the last few weeks when she seemed like a flip-flopper on abortion and same-sex marriage.
Be sure to let me know when you have something of substance to say about a comment I've made. And don't forget to let us know when you stopped beating your wife/kid/dog.
Your parents named you Griffin Griffin. They watched a lot of "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" before you were born?
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