Karen Sage Defeats Mindy Montford in 299th District Court Democratic Primary Runoff

Hoping to see some analysis too in Sage/Montford Race (3.00 / 1)

I hope someone does some analysis of the race too. I had the impression it was going to be a lot closer than it turned out. Montford did a little better in this runoff than she did in 2008 in the DA race when she lost 65 to 35, but not a whole lot better.

Mary Tuma has an article in the Community Impact Newspaper about Karen Sage's victory:

Sage attributes her win to the door-to-door grassroots campaigning led by her team since June, a method she said is an unconventional approach to judicial races. The candidate employed four full-time field operators, a manager, director and several volunteers.

"We took the campaign out of the courthouse, out of the hands of political consultants and into the community," she said. "It's really about taking the campaign directly to the voters, which is a little new for judicial elections. I think today we are starting to see that that's a good idea."

Campaign Manager Jim Wick noted the race produced no staff turnover and hired no major political or fundraising consultant. Sage said she has personally spoken with 10,000 voters over the course of the campaign, either in person or over the phone.  

Karen and Charlie Baird at her victory party Tuesday night.

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by: Scott Cobb @ Thu Apr 15, 2010 at 04:10:10 AM UTC

Thanks for the post (3.00 / 1)

I too look forward to a pct by pct analysis of this race. Its pretty interesting since it was the only race on the ballot. It gives you a good feel for the true grassroots of the party. Will anyone that supported Montford have a take on how the race went? So far Phillip is the only one weighing in.  

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by: TexianPolitico @ Thu Apr 15, 2010 at 13:09:03 PM UTC

Yep (0.00 / 0)

KT is on vacation and neither David nor I can write about this race since we both have companies or connections to the campaign. Kath is working for Kurt Kuhn and Todd is in DC.

That leaves Michael and Phil.

I would love to write about it, but it would be in direct conflict to the standards I discussed here.

The problem with our standards, is it cuts both ways. That's why we disclose who we work for and why we don't write about the people that pay our bills-- past or present.

I get that people want to read about this race, but the best thing someone can do is write a post so we can front page it. This is a community after all.

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by: Matt Glazer @ Thu Apr 15, 2010 at 17:02:16 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I'll do a write-up (0.00 / 0)

I'm heading back into Austin tonight after being in the Carribean for the last week. (Don't worry, I voted early).

I'll take a look at the numbers and try to pull together some analysis for the start of next week if it works. I'm just as curious as everyone else to take a look at it.

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by: Karl-Thomas Musselman @ Sat Apr 17, 2010 at 16:45:49 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

A little analysis (5.00 / 2)

I don't think that the post-primary campaign changed a lot of minds. Mindy and Karen both pushed their positives, but neither one came out with a big revelation that could peel off votes from the other.

The big difference was intensity of support. Of Karen's 13,032 voters in the primary, more than half (6830) came back for the runoff. Of Mindy's 15,884 primary voters, fewer than a third (4797) came back. Partly this is because Karen's campaign did a superb GOTV effort, with considerable help from the UDems. But partly it's that Karen's support was more intense to begin with.

Mindy always had a lot more name recognition, both because of her run for DA and because of her father. Mindy has much deeper Austin roots than Karen, and that translates into a lot of instant support. Kirk Watson's high-profile endorsement, and the endorsement of the Statesman, gave the sense that Mindy was the default choice, and that probably got her a bunch of votes from people who went to the polls to vote for Bill White or Ronnie Earle or Linda Chavez Thompson.

But precisely because Karen was an outsider, much of her support came from one-on-one interactions. Karen ran incredibly hard, and ran for twice as long as Mindy. A lot of us saw Karen on the campaign trail, as far back as last summer, and were impressed. The resulting word-of-mouth buzz motivated the political junkies who vote in runoffs.

Donna Howard and the Austin Chronicle didn't hurt, either. My impression is that Donna's support matters to fewer people than Kirk Watson's, and by a wide margin, but that her support matters a lot to activists in HD48. Donna's robo-calls may not have changed a lot of minds about who to vote for, but they helped get Karen's voters to the polls.

Bottom line: this was a breadth-of-support vs. depth-of-support contest. Mindy won on breadth in March. Karen won on depth in April.  

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by: LSadun @ Thu Apr 15, 2010 at 17:13:09 PM UTC

That's a good take. (0.00 / 0)

I agree with your take. Thanks for sharing it.

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by: TexianPolitico @ Thu Apr 15, 2010 at 17:41:39 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Good post Lorenzo (0.00 / 0)

Well thought out analysis.

Best,
David

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by: David Kobierowski @ Sat Apr 17, 2010 at 06:14:52 AM UTC