 |
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
 By Walter Jenny Jr., an Edmond resident, is secretary of the Oklahoma Democratic Party and chairman of the Edmond Democrats.
From The Edmond Sun:
Fallin needs a strong fourth quarter to keep 5th district
Last Tuesday saw the selection of the final candidates for lieutenant governor for both the Democrats and Republicans. The only other major race on the ballot was the Republican shootout for the 5th District Congressional nomination between Lt. Gov. Mary Fallin and Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett.
Fallin won the congressional runoff 26,744 to 15,665, picking up 63 percent of the vote. She led in the primary with 16,691 votes to Cornett’s 11,718, a 10 percentage-point spread. But in a field of six candidates dividing 48,287 votes, she failed to pick up the majority necessary to win the primary outright, forcing her into an expensive runoff.
If that seems like too many numbers to digest, that’s unfortunate, because politics is a game of numbers. Rule No. 1 in politics is you have to get more votes than your opponent. Denise Bode spent $1 million in the primary and came in a distant third with less than 10,000 votes. All the money in the world can’t buy you love, and everybody seems to love Mary Fallin.
Fallin has served in the lieutenant governor’s post since 1994, and was in the Legislature for four years before that. She is now the second-longest serving lieutenant governor in the United States.
But the numbers in this 5th District race will be interesting. Democrats outnumber Republicans 170,601 to 161,446 in the district, which includes Seminole, Pottawatomie and most of Oklahoma County. There are 46,509 Independents in the district meaning neither party has a clear majority. In a state where more folks registered as Democrats than Republicans in the past year, this congressional seat will be up for grabs.
That’s a change from previous years. When Ernest Istook won the runoff against Bill Price in 1992 after incumbent Mickey Edwards came in third in the primary, Istook came within 100 votes of the exact same figure Mary Fallin received. But only 47,338 votes were cast in the runoff, compared to 42,409 in last week’s runoff.
Compare that to the Democratic primary between Edmond’s Dr. David Hunter and Oklahoma City teacher Bert Smith. Voters cast 39,015 ballots in a lukewarm campaign in which the candidates spent only a fraction of what the Republicans spent. Hunter picked up 24,660 votes, far more than Mary Fallin’s 16,691 in the primary and almost as many as Fallin received in her hotly contested runoff. Read more...
Posted at 8/29/2006 10:51:00 AM  
|
|
|
