Why Garrett Won
This past Saturday the Fifth District Republican Convention nominated State Senator Tom Garrett to be their Congressional candidate. This was the culmination of months of campaigning and maneuvering by 5 candidates (Andrew Griffin dropped out before the convention). There are multiple reasons why Mr. Garrett won. Let’s start with the most important one:
Experience doesn’t equal Establishment
In a recent op-ed, Michael Del Rosso’s Campaign Manger Gray Delany responded to attacks that had been relayed to his campaign.
“The people attacking Michael are desperate not because they have serious concerns about Michael’s qualifications for Congress, but because they are members of the GOP Establishment. They want to make sure the Establishment choice for this seat gets into Congress.”
Absurdity, thy name is “calling Tom Garrett stablishment.”
Was Senator Garrett being “establishment” when he hired the Cantor dragonslayer Zach Werrell? Was he being “establishment” when he was earning the NRA endorsement or one of the highest ACU ratings in the Virginia Senate? Was Senator Garrett being “establishment” when he basically stood up to the entire Virginia Senate power structure and told Majority Leader Norment that a single Senator shouldn’t chair Senate Finance and be Majority Leader at the same time? Was he being “establishment” when he campaigned around the district stating that he would join the House Freedom Caucus if elected to Congress?
The answer to every single one of those questions is NO. An overwhelming no at that.
We need to get past this idea that experience is equal to being “establishment” and that the idea of anybody who has been elected to office before automatically means that person is “establishment.” Barry Goldwater served in the Senate for 30 years, Ronald Reagan was a two-term Governor before he was President, and Newt Gingrich had served for 20 years before he even became Speaker of the House. Experience doesn’t mean you already caved, experience means you have rolled up your sleeves and done something. Experience means you stopped armchair quarterbacking and started actually trying to fix problems in government. No matter if you were right or wrong, it means that you actually did something. Senator Garrett made that argument quite effectively and his margin of victory shows it.
Del Rosso couldn’t answer the questions surrounding his business practices and who had and who he hadn’t “advised on national security.”
If I were Senator Garrett, while I was making out my thank you notes for winning the nomination, our own Rollin Reisinger should be somewhere towards the top of the pile. Rollin was relentless in his pursuit of finding the truth behind the questionable business record of Mr. Del Rosso. Rollin went so far as to traveling to where all of Del Rosso’s businesses were “located” to find out someone else owned the office space.
At the same time, Rollin’s work to uncover the truth on the question of whether Del Rosso actually advised Senator Ted Cruz, among others, on national security issues was particularly damning. Senior level Virginia Cruz operatives, including former Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, went on record with Bearing Drift to confirm that Del Rosso had not formally advised Senator Cruz or his campaign. The more lies that swirled, the chances of Del Rosso losing went up.
Positivity Sells
Watch these two speeches. The first is Del Rosso’s speech after the third ballot. Del Rosso spends half of his two-minute speech yelling about some attack made against him in Buckingham County. My first question is, “does he want some cheese with that whine?” Seriously, he wins the first ballot then spends the rest of the time complaining about his opponent. The second part of his speech sounds like his stump speech – which is full of Islamophobic scare tactics designed used to scare voters into trusting his almighty (and exaggerated) knowledge of national security issues. As the results tell us, it didn’t work.
Contrast that to this speech, Garrett’s after the third ballot. Which one of these is more uplifting? I think it’s obvious. Garrett doesn’t even mention his opponent by name. He doesn’t attack anyone. He just talks about making the country stronger. This kind of optimism sells and that final speech could have been what put Garrett over the top.
The Dragonslayer
The first time I ever heard of the book “How to Bag a RINO,” I remember saying to myself (I’ll omit the profanities because this is a G-rated website), “Who is this pretentious little Yankee named Zach Werrell and what makes him think that just because he worked for Dave Brat that he’s God’s gift to campaigns! I mean really, he’s going around the country telling people about running campaigns and he’s only won his first race!”
Zach, I would like to let you know that my crow tasted lovely.
Mr. Werrell and the Garrett campaign team took the outsider message and applied that to the most experienced candidate in the race. Like I stated before, they were able to relay to the delegates that experience doesn’t mean establishment. The messaging was the key and Mr. Werrell is a genius for threading the needle that is campaign messaging. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone running statewide next year from Mr. Werrell’s wing of the party offered him a pretty penny to do the same thing in a statewide campaign.
Joe Whited was the perfect candidate, but he was running in the wrong district.
I have told many people that if ten Republican consultants and a bunch of Republican opinion writers like myself got together and built the most electable congressional candidate in some secret lab somewhere, that candidate would probably be Joe Whited. He’s knowledgeable, a veteran, a Congressional policy advisor (a real one), and a tie aficionado (from one tie aficionado to another, props to Mr. Whited for always wearing a power tie better than anyone else in Virginia politics) Whited’s resume screamed electability.
In all seriousness, Mr. Whited ran the cleanest campaign and the most technologically savvy campaign. He also was probably one of the most electable candidates running in Virginia this cycle. His knowledge of policy, especially national security and military issues, was limitless. I had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Whited for VPOD and I have to say he is the most knowledgeable candidate I have ever interviewed.
Joe Whited could be an amazing candidate in a swing district similar to Virginia’s 2nd or 10th. However, the Fifth District is just too conservative for a moderate like Whited. He knows the policy better than anyone and he ran the cleanest campaign. I hope this is not the last we have seen of Joe Whited.
McKelvey couldn’t translate the Trump phenomenon into a nomination.
Jim McKelvey is probably one of the nicest and most genuine guys on the planet. He’s just a country boy from Bedford, and just talking to him one could never tell that he’s a rather wealthy developer. I’ve had the distinct pleasure to get to know him and I can say he’s a good man with his heart in the right place.
However, at times it felt like Mr. McKelvey was trying to rely on the Trump people to translate a win at a convention. This probably didn’t work because most of the Trump supporters are new to politics and haven’t been around as long. Mr. McKelvey has his heart where it should be, he just didn’t have a winning strategy.
(Interesting fact, McKelvey won more votes to become RNC delegate than he did the congressional nomination.)
Folks, the Fifth District campaign was a rowdy and spirited race. It was a rough and tumble that taught us many lessons. However, one must remember that experience is not a bad word, it’s something that can be used for good. Congratulations are in order for Senator Garrett, Zach Werrell, and his team for running a strong campaign.
