For the past few months 11th district congressional candidate Keith Fimian has been hammering his primary opponent Pat Herrity on his voting record regarding taxes. At first Herrity ignored these attacks but they became too big for him not to address. The result is the focus on this race dramatically shifting from opposition to Gerry Connolly to a referendum on Pat Herrity as a county supervisor.
Case in point, here is a sampling from an email from the Fimian campaign this week:
“Pat Herrity wants us to trust him with our vote, but his own record as County Supervisor shows we can’t even be sure he’ll show up for work. Supervisor Herrity has a track record of failing to attend meetings and missing votes on issues that he says are important.
“Official government records show that Pat Herrity failed to vote over 103 times as Fairfax Supervisor. Supervisor Herrity even skipped out on 40% of meetings on the Virginia Transportation Commission; even though he says transportation is a priority. But Herrity did show up to raise over 25 taxes and fees!”
Shortly afterward the Herrity campaign sent out an email defending his record:
“Keith Fimian seems intent on making up reasons not to vote for Pat, rather than present reasons to vote for himself.
“Pat has a lifelong record of public service to our community yet Fimian is attacking Pat for being absent for votes when Fimian has been absent from our community.”
Today they sent out an email from the clerk of the court, John Frey, defending Herrity’s record:
“If you are like Sheila and me, you have been deluged with mailers from both campaigns. Many have been misleading, to say the least. Let me just say, I follow the Board of Supervisors very closely and I can assure you that Pat Herrity is the conservative leader on the Board and he has been fighting every day for the past two and half years for limited government and reduced spending. The only budget Pat voted for lowered the average tax bill, the actual amount people were paying, and cut approximately $100 million in spending. And every year, whether Pat voted for the budget or not, he put tens of millions of dollars worth of spending cuts on the table.”
All three emails could be accurately described as “combative” to say the least. However, in my opinion the Fimian campaign clearly seems in control. The purpose of such attacks is to get your opponent completely off message. As Herrity often repeats, he is the frontrunner in this race. Make no mistake, he definitely is. However, the Fimian campaign has succeeded in getting Herrity off message and forced him to play defense. Voters often interpret this as weakness (see George Allen) so it will be interesting to see if a majority of primary voters sees it that way.
Any political consultant can tell you how crucial messaging is to a campaign. Instead of talking about deficit reduction, opposition to Obamacare, and job creation – Herrity is defending his absentee record.
If Herrity loses on Tuesday then he can look back and say that he could have won if he only talked about the issues and rode his superior name identification to victory.
So will this strategy turn into votes for Fimian? We will see on Tuesday.