I'm voting for Ralph in September, you should too

In the interest of full disclosure, I wanted to let my readers know that I will be voting for Minority Leader Becker in September (by absentee probably). I guess this would constitute an endorsement. But before the Becker people get overly excited, I want stress that I still haven't decided whom I will vote for in the general election, but he is certainly in my top two.



Here's why we all need to vote for Ralph Becker on September 11, 2007:

Ralph is still in third place, maybe fourth...although "I don't know" is beating everyone but Jenny Wilson.

Unless she screws up royally (and she won't), Jenny will make it past the first round in September, but probably won't win outright. This leaves a race for second place. If Buhler or Christensen win that spot, they will be crushed by Jenny Wilson for one simple reason:

That's right, only 28% of SLC voters would vote for a Republican and the others than claim it doesn't matter can probably be swayed Jenny's way once positions are fully reveled via voting records.

But if Ralph makes into the second slot, it will be one heck of race. And Ralph has no where to go but up:

Buhler was viewed the most unfavorably: 19 percent gave him negative reviews. Christensen's portion of unfavorable impressions was 16 percent, Wilson's 11 percent and Becker's 9 percent.
Of the top tier of candidates, Becker faces the biggest name-recognition hurdle, as 35 percent said they had not heard of him.

The big question is, how is he going to get himself known? I am assuming Becker is squirreling away cash to spend on door-to-door-campaigning, and inevitably on radio or TV or newspapers ads or mailers or billboards. I personally think that billboards are worthless in a mayoral race. I would do radio and newspapers if it were me. The people that are going to vote in a runoff off-year election are partisans and activists. Mailers might be good to target the Democratic mailing list but that still won't get people who are interested in politics enough to vote but not enough to let the Party get their phone number, mailing address etc. Radio and newspaper will do that. And you can target audiences on radio. Plus newspaper has shown to be more cost effective in reaching out to likely voters than other mediums.

Anyway, I would like a real choice in November because there is no way I would vote for a guy who is afraid of his own party but still conservative, or the other guy who wants to pretend he wasn't a conservative Republican in the state legislature. I would like to struggle with deciding who is better than just not voting for the bad one.