Who Ran The Worst House of Representatives Campaign in the 2022 Election Cycle?

[kapak44]

Hello everyone. So now that we have winners for almost all of the 2022 House races, I feel the time has come to start a new edition of the first exercise that I carried out in this forum. The question is this: Who do you think ran the worst U.S House of Representatives Campaign in the 2022 Election Cycle? To make things simple, I am not considering special elections, since the circumstances there are too different from those of the regular elections for the special elections to get a fair evaluation. I am also not counting candidates who won their House races, since I believe that achieving this means that they ran campaigns that were at least not as horrible as those of their general election rivals. And finally, I am not taking into account the unresolved CA-13 race, as the jury is still out whether Adam Gray ran a poor enough campaign to blow a race in a district that Joe Biden won by a double digit margin.* (EDIT: His loss is now confirmed. Screw this piece of crap for his colossal incompetence.) In the interest of being equal, I chose three contenders from each of the Democratic and Republican parties, and provided the reasons why I think these candidates were selected for running the worst campaigns.

A fair warning: This cycle’s thread has some lengthy and heated tirades towards California Democrats, as my statewide party’s performance was completely disgraceful and cannot be ignored. There is no sugarcoating the inexcusable performance of my home state’s Democrats this cycle and how it was even worse than what they did in 2020. Without further ado:

Republican:

Sarah Palin. Some say that that this probably should not count since the race might not fall within the rules that I set for this post due to Alaska’s new primary and general election format, but holy CRAP does she take the cake in horrid candidates. And there are waaaay too many Republicans to choose from when it comes to running the worst House of Representatives campaign for that party this cycle. Let’s see, she fully went down the crazy side by encouraging future Capitol stormings in her campaign by having “huge badass rallies” and reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. Then, she did nothing to address the massive mess from the events that led up to her resignation as governor back in 2009, which gave the accurate impression that she would just use the office for a political stunt and not care about Alaska’s needs. She basically was too dependent on Donald Trump’s rallies and seemed to think that she could just waltz into the seat with no problems. Oh, and she burned far too many bridges with the state’s Republicans, including Lisa Murkowski, who still has a lot of political influence in Alaska despite the heavy fire that she took over the past two years. You know the last Republican who lost a statewide federal election in Alaska? Ted Stevens, who was found guilty on seven felony counts of improperly reporting gifts. In 2008. THAT speaks volumes to how bad a candidate Sarah Palin became and how she lost both the special and the November elections for this seat.

Bruce Poliquin. Okay, I know that Jared Golden’s incumbency advantage takes some of the sting about this ignominious failure. But Bruce Poliquin had a lot of baggage from his 2018 loss that honestly should have forced Republicans there to think twice before nominating him in the ME-02 race, despite being well-funded. For one, many conservatives in this area really did not like Bruce Poliquin, whether it was because of his personality or some other minor issue. The Maine Fraternal Order of Police's (who supported hyper-conservative Paul LePage) endorsement of Jared Golden over Bruce Poliquin squarely brings home that point. Also, Bruce Poliquin kept spouting generic MAGA talking points like securing the Mexico border, which is located all the way to the other side of the country that the district is located in. Nominating Bruce Poliquin is like taking a truck that you know has faulty brakes and not caring because the alternatives are much too slow to get to the destination. And the end result definitely was a gory crash for the GOP here, since this was the reddest district that a Democrat held at the beginning of 2021.

Joe Kent. Where do I begin with this wacko? Participating in a lawsuit (dismissed by a federal judge, of course) challenging the results of Washington by claiming evidence that votes were flipped, removed, or added is just the tip of an iceberg. Calling the January 6th riot an intelligence operation and those arrested political prisoners is pretty disgusting. Stopping immigration, defunding FBI is as far right as a Republican gets. Calling COVID a scam and opposing vaccines by calling them experimental gene therapy and calling for Dr. Fauci to be charged with murder is a whole new level of sick. The list just goes on and on. It is generally hard to lose a district that voted for your party in the last presidential election during a midterm while the opposing party controls the White House. The last people to do this were Lee Terry and Steve Southerland in 2014, who both ran horrible campaigns and shot themselves in the foot that cycle. And boy did Joe Kent fit that bill by turning off countless voters with his unhinged claims. If Jaime Herrera Beutler was renominated, I firmly believe she would have won re-election by at least a double-digit margin like she did in 2020.

Democratic:

Laura Gillen. She had serious drama with Jay Jacobs during the primary, who basically went negative on her with his “I’m not here to help people with their dreams” and attempted to back Keith Corbett instead. Plenty of heated rhetoric was exchanged between the women’s groups who supported Laura Gillen in the primary and several prominent Nassau County Democrats who filed challenges to her nominating petitions and donated to Keith Corbett’s campaign. Despite public unity efforts after the primary, these wounds did not fully heal, as disputes continued to well up between these two camps under the surface, especially about campaign messaging. Because Laura Gillen did not resolve these internal conflicts, her campaign struggled to reach out to voters outside her Rockville Centre base and failed to mount a lasting response to the crime and cashless bail attacks that the Nassau County Republicans threw at her. The political ads that Laura Gillen did release were nonsensical, lacked variety, and failed to connect with voters at all. Given that the district that Laura Gillen ran in voted for Joe Biden by over 14 points, she definitely should not have blown her race, even under a red wave environment. Especially since her opponent, Anthony D’Esposito, was punished by the NYPD for letting his gun get stolen from his car.

Rudy Salas. The main problem was that he waited too long to formally announce his campaign by putting it off until October 2021. Before that, Rudy Salas only gave publicly announcements about his preparations to enter the race, which froze the field and prevented any Democratic organization from making inroads in that area. When he did start his campaign, it was far too low profile at the start to get things running and did not give a serious impression that he was running for Congress instead of for his state Assembly seat. He demonstrated this rocky start when his volunteers violated federal campaign regulations by using signs from his state Assembly campaigns at his announcement event.

Any candidate running in this district needs to be well-versed in attracting Hispanic voters, as they make up a clear majority of the district’s electorate and historically turn out in lower numbers than other types of voters, especially for a midterm election. Rudy Salas’s campaign events did not make much of an impact in winning over the district’s Hispanic communities in 2021, and he did not have a Spanish language campaign website for much of the cycle. Now, I did some work for TJ Cox’s re-election campaign in 2020, and any Democrat needed to raise at least $1 million by the end of 2021 to set up the necessary Hispanic outreach measures to turn out enough allied voters to win the district this year. Which Rudy Salas did not do. In short, Rudy Salas’ stalling plagued Democrats in this area and gave David Valadao too much of a head start to be knocked off this cycle. Big disappointment here, but Rudy Salas’ campaign was at least not as bad as that of the following Democrat, who was also running in a California district, to the great shame of my state.

EDIT: This slot should be replaced with Adam Gray, now that his loss is now official. See the end of my post for my reasoning. A truly shameful performance and the perfect example on how California Democrats sucked hard this cycle.

Christy Smith. Seriously, Capital F WITH THREE DASHES HER FOR RUNNING AGAIN. I really did not want this section to be a California Democrat bashing section, but my state’s Democratic party was absolutely incompetent this cycle when it came to proper organization. Not backing an alternative candidate with local ties to the area was the biggest mistake that the state’s organization did this cycle. And she clearly did not learn from the many unforced errors that she committed in her previous campaigns that caused her to significantly underperform the Democratic baseline, despite the district’s activist base handing these races to her on a silver platter. Rather, she kept making the same mistakes that depressed Democratic turnout and drove away swing voters in an unbelievably cringeworthy manner. Christy Smith is a textbook example of what a candidate should NOT do when running a campaign.

First, she constantly attacked fellow Democrats in her campaign mailers and social media during the primary with unprecedented viciousness by using weak arguments such as being endorsed by the Democratic primary. This was just like in 2020 where Christy Smith alienated a large number of voters up and down the political spectrum with several horrid Facebook and Twitter posts that she made back then, especially those connected to several of her votes made as a State Assemblywoman. Then, she posted horrid fundraising numbers all throughout 2021, which were even worse than the pittance she raised in her second campaign. Many Democratic donors I know were burned and unwilling to invest in a damaged goods candidate like her. Like it or not, the stink that came from her two losses, with the first by a larger than expected margin, was far too conspicuous to ignore. Finally, her campaign events were a uniquely horrible experience to volunteers. If you do not live in the district, you basically are treated like a dumbass by everyone from her volunteer coordinators to the voters themselves. From her pathetic canvassing to her mindless phone-banking runs, the messages were generic Democratic talking points (like defending democracy) and did nothing to resonate with the district’s swing voters, especially its suburbanites. News flash: this messaging does not work and just gets you responses like “I have heard enough of your BS, what else is new?” and “Screw you, you’re not bringing anything I want to the table.” And interacting with Christy Smith is a uniquely demoralizing job that I would only wish on my worst enemies. Everyone I knew who worked in her first two campaigns had what they called a “Christy Smith moment”, which was a moment in which she did or said something that crossed a personal line with them. They were really incensed that Christy Smith acted alone and without regard to the district’s voters, especially to its large military affiliated populations. They also took a lot of abuse from the voters that they interacted in their phone banking, who absolutely despise Christy Smith and were not willing to vote for her. All of them were really angry at the way that she treated each of them when it came to running campaign operations, and had absolutely no interest in supporting her this cycle. Because Christy Smith angered far too many Democrats in the area and did not have the sense to know that too many donors were wanted nothing to do with her, the House Majority PAC triaged the race in the weeks before Election Day, just like they did with her in the CA-25 special election.

It was very clear that the ceiling was not high enough for Christy Smith to win the district, as she was reviled outside of the area’s activist base and had far too much baggage from the mistakes that she made in her first two losses. All Christy Smith did was prevent any other local candidate from getting the necessary resources and name recognition to mount a viable campaign. She spent too many years in the Clinton administration for her to win in today’s environment. I, and everyone else I knew who worked on her first two campaigns, saw this loss coming as soon as Christy Smith announced her third run. Even though several of us implored her not to run again because of the trauma that we suffered from our experiences there, she did so anyway. As a result, all of us wrote this race off as soon as she made her announcement, as the stubborn and idiotic activist base was hell bent on supporting her despite receiving our massive protests against this decision. Then, we either swore off House campaigns this cycle or joined forces with Jay Chen instead. (By the way, Jay Chen is a dishonorable mention this cycle for his failure to stop the bleeding in the district’s Asian areas and for not handling the accent situation in April properly.) Instead of shoving us deeper into the electoral gutter, Christy Smith should have secured a lobbyist job for an organization like Juul, as Martha Coakley, one of the very few other imbeciles who screwed up her own races to Christy Smith’s level, did. George Whitesides would have won if the activist base gave him as much support as they did for Christy Smith. So would Jess Phoenix. That is because they do not have a history of attacking progressives and other Democrats during the primary to their personal breaking points. Christy Smith needs to get the HELL out of politics, as we lost a sh**tload of ground not only in this area, but in other California districts because of her consecutive defeats and resulting surges in fundraising and volunteers for GOP candidates. And we will not be able to regain our losses for a very long time.

Phew!! That is my perspective of the 2022 House races, which may or may not be horribly wrong and is the longest write-up that I have ever done so far in this forum. Like the first two times that I ran this exercise, I am interested and curious to hear what you guys think and who would be your choices to answer the question presented in this thread.

* If Adam Gray DOES end up losing the CA-13 race, which is likely, then he absolutely deserves to be on this list, as he bombed a race that the Democrats should have won with relative ease by committing several of the same mistakes that Christy Smith did. He blew off far too many of Phil Arballo’s supporters in the primary and stuck too heavily to wooing the police vote by spending too much time getting the support of anti-immigrant sheriffs. Quite a few people were turned off by Adam Gray and decided to sit that race out. Adam Gray also kept bleeding support from swing voters, and he got outraised by John Duarte in the second quarter of 2022 right after the primary concluded, which made it difficult for him to get his general election campaign moving. All of this caused the race to gradually but steadily move away from Adam Gray, and I also saw this loss coming in the final weeks of this election cycle. Assuming that this loss stands, I would actually replace Rudy Salas with Adam Gray, as Adam Gray was not facing a Republican incumbent, unlike Rudy Salas and Christy Smith. While incumbency advantages are somewhat overrated in today’s environment, this particular aggravating factor is enough for me to make this replacement in the Democratic section. It would also be a perfect example showing that California Democrats did not learn their lessons and performed worse than they did in 2020.

[Spectator]

I don’t know how JR Majewski didn’t at least get #2 on the GOP side. Close contest with Palin.

[kwabbit]

I think you’re not giving enough credit to Garcia and Valadao. They won their districts more than the Democrats lost them. They are still beatable in 2024, but I don’t think anyone would’ve beaten them this year. On the flip side, you can’t just say every Republican has run a disastrous campaign against Golden. It’s way more Golden being strong. Poliquin is weak, but again I don’t think any Republican would have beaten Golden.

Gillen was just a victim of the wave. She would’ve won easily if Hochul won the seat by a typical Dem margin.

Campaigns that stand out as terrible to me are Majewski, Bo Hines, Joe Kent. In those races it’s more clear that running a better campaign would have made a difference. On the Democratic side, I think only maybe SPM can be held responsible. Zeldin won his seat easily, but if he wasn’t caught sleeping he would’ve won. Maybe McLeod Skinner in Oregon. Shrader might’ve won, but not clear. It’s just hard to recast yourself and be appealing to swing voters after challenging an incumbent to his left.

[S019]

Joe Kent

[Tekken_Guy]

How is Sean Patrick Maloney not on here?

[kapak44]

I don’t know how JR Majewski didn’t at least get #2 on the GOP side. Close contest with Palin.

Like I said, there were far too many Republicans to choose from. JR Majewski is indeed a very strong Dishonorable Mention and barely missed being on the list, since I was privy to how Bruce Poliquin's carried out his campaign, and his arguments were very weak. Given the fact that Bruce Poliquin did much worse this time than he did in 2018, despite 2022 being a relatively redder year overall, and I felt that he deserved to be on the list. I do think it is debatable and that JR Majewski would be a reasonable replacement over Bruce Poliquin on the top 3 worst Republican campaigns for the House. After all, JR Majewski threw out a very winnable race with his misrepresentation of his military service (which REALLY pissed off the district's veterans), his drunken driving record, and his participation in the January 6th insurrection. The NRCC triaged the race and rightfully left him out to dry to a double digit loss in a district Donald Trump won, which is not something that the NRCC does very often.

I think you’re not giving enough credit to Garcia and Valadao. They won their districts more than the Democrats lost them. They are still beatable in 2024, but I don’t think anyone would’ve beaten them this year. On the flip side, you can’t just say every Republican has run a disastrous campaign against Golden. It’s way more Golden being strong. Poliquin is weak, but again I don’t think any Republican would have beaten Golden.

Gillen was just a victim of the wave. She would’ve won easily if Hochul won the seat by a typical Dem margin.

Campaigns that stand out as terrible to me are Majewski, Bo Hines, Joe Kent. In those races it’s more clear that running a better campaign would have made a difference. On the Democratic side, I think only maybe SPM can be held responsible. Zeldin won his seat easily, but if he wasn’t caught sleeping he would’ve won. Maybe McLeod Skinner in Oregon. Shrader might’ve won, but not clear. It’s just hard to recast yourself and be appealing to swing voters after challenging an incumbent to his left.

David Valadao was certainly not the easiest target to dislodge in California this cycle, but since none of the candidates were raising enough money to start the necessary Hispanic outreach measures in the area by the second quarter of June 2021, I and all of the volunteers who were interested in flipping CA-22 gave up and looked at other promising candidates such as Jay Chen, who seemed to exceed expectations when we were looking at target districts to volunteer in last year. I stand by my statement against Christy Smith. The race would not have been an easy flip even if the activist base had the sense to back an alternative like George Whitesides and Jess Phoenix. However, Christy Smith's freezing of the local candidate field and the activist base's refusal to listen to reason caused us to immediately write this off as a loss, as the situation was clearly beyond repair to our eyes thanks to the traumatizing volunteering experiences of her campaign. As for Laura Gillen, her campaign was pumping out this type of garbage in the mailboxes thanks to the internal disputes of supporting groups that she was unable to mediate. Not only was the message nonsensical and not based on any proof, I actually heard from a contact there that several Long Island Democrats were offended by this, as they do have some pro-gun views.

How is Sean Patrick Maloney not on here?

Blame the complete incompetence of the California Democrats, as the campaigns of those that I referenced were far too horrid to ignore. Sean Patrick Maloney is definitely another Dishonorable Mention, however, as he pissed off at lot of New York Democrats on all levels and bled a lot of voter support in the district that he chose to ran in because of the redistricting musical chair mess that he created.

[Tekken_Guy]

I don’t know how JR Majewski didn’t at least get #2 on the GOP side. Close contest with Palin.

Like I said, there were far too many Republicans to choose from. JR Majewski is indeed a very strong Dishonorable Mention and barely missed being on the list, since I was privy to how Bruce Poliquin's carried out his campaign, and his arguments were very weak. Given the fact that Bruce Poliquin did much worse this time than he did in 2018, despite 2022 being a relatively redder year overall, and I felt that he deserved to be on the list. I do think it is debatable and that JR Majewski would be a reasonable replacement over Bruce Poliquin on the top 3 worst Republican campaigns for the House. After all, JR Majewski threw out a very winnable race with his misrepresentation of his military service (which REALLY pissed off the district's veterans), his drunken driving record, and his participation in the January 6th insurrection. The NRCC triaged the race and rightfully left him out to dry to a double digit loss in a district Donald Trump won, which is not something that the NRCC does very often.

I think you’re not giving enough credit to Garcia and Valadao. They won their districts more than the Democrats lost them. They are still beatable in 2024, but I don’t think anyone would’ve beaten them this year. On the flip side, you can’t just say every Republican has run a disastrous campaign against Golden. It’s way more Golden being strong. Poliquin is weak, but again I don’t think any Republican would have beaten Golden.

Gillen was just a victim of the wave. She would’ve won easily if Hochul won the seat by a typical Dem margin.

Campaigns that stand out as terrible to me are Majewski, Bo Hines, Joe Kent. In those races it’s more clear that running a better campaign would have made a difference. On the Democratic side, I think only maybe SPM can be held responsible. Zeldin won his seat easily, but if he wasn’t caught sleeping he would’ve won. Maybe McLeod Skinner in Oregon. Shrader might’ve won, but not clear. It’s just hard to recast yourself and be appealing to swing voters after challenging an incumbent to his left.

David Valadao was certainly not the easiest target to dislodge in California this cycle, but since none of the candidates were raising enough money to start the necessary Hispanic outreach measures in the area by the second quarter of June 2021, I and all of the volunteers who were interested in flipping CA-22 gave up and looked at other promising candidates such as Jay Chen, who seemed to exceed expectations when we were looking at target districts to volunteer in last year. I stand by my statement against Christy Smith. The race would not have been an easy flip even if the activist base had the sense to back an alternative like George Whitesides and Jess Phoenix. However, Christy Smith's freezing of the local candidate field and the activist base's refusal to listen to reason caused us to immediately write this off as a loss, as the situation was clearly beyond repair to our eyes thanks to the traumatizing volunteering experiences of her campaign. As for Laura Gillen, her campaign was pumping out this type of garbage in the mailboxes thanks to the internal disputes of supporting groups that she was unable to mediate. Not only was the message nonsensical and not based on any proof, I actually heard from a contact there that several Long Island Democrats were offended by this, as they do have some pro-gun views.

How is Sean Patrick Maloney not on here?

Blame the complete incompetence of the California Democrats, as the campaigns of those that I referenced were far too horrid to ignore. Sean Patrick Maloney is definitely another Dishonorable Mention, however, as he pissed off at lot of New York Democrats on all levels and bled a lot of voter support in the district that he chose to ran in because of the redistricting musical chair mess that he created.

Maloney was a DCCC chair and five term incumbent. His loss was way more embarrassing than Gillen’s.

[kapak44]

(snipped)

Maloney was a DCCC chair and five term incumbent. His loss was way more embarrassing than Gillen’s.

You could make the case for that for sure, now that I think about that. The district that Laura Gillen was trying to run in was slightly bluer (~4 points on the presidential level) than where Sean Patrick Maloney decided to run in. But I can see how his incumbency and being the DCCC chair were aggravating factors. I personally believe that he was even worse at the job than Cheri Bustos was, and that is saying a lot due to how 2020 went. Putting him as DCCC chair was a big "what were they thinking" move made by House Democrats this cycle. They should have picked Tony Cárdenas for the role instead IMO.

[Arizona Iced Tea]

I don’t know how JR Majewski didn’t at least get #2 on the GOP side. Close contest with Palin.

Majewski was a bad candidate, but looking at Rs in the midwest they pretty much underperformed everywhere except Iowa. MN-02, IL-17, IN-01, MI-03, MI-07,MI-08, OH-01, and OH-13. Even the seats they flipped (IA-03, WI-03, MI-10) were by slimmer margins than expected. Yes Majewski, was worse than the other candidates but on a night where Chabot was going down, Dems winning OH-13, and Vance doing worse than Trump, I don't think candidate quality was what costed him his race. Not to mention Kaptur was the incumbent in that seat for nearly 40 years which likely had some benefit.

[Continential]

A possible contender could be Robert Zimmerman since his opponent is someone who is very flawed and has multiple vulnerabilities - and despite this Santos won.

[Ferguson97]

In no particular order, the 5 worst campaigns were:

John Gibbs
JR Majewski
Joe Kent
Sean Patrick Maloney
Sarah Palin

[kapak44]

A possible contender could be Robert Zimmerman since his opponent is someone who is very flawed and has multiple vulnerabilities - and despite this Santos won.

Robert Zimmerman is a Dishonorable Mention for sure, as he had no business losing to a full-on election denier who attended a January 6th rally. However, this loss is not as embarrassing as Laura Gillen or Sean Patrick Maloney, who ran in double digit Joe Biden districts.

In no particular order, the 5 worst campaigns were:

John Gibbs
JR Majewski
Joe Kent
Sean Patrick Maloney
Sarah Palin

John Gibbs does get the Dishonorable Mention label as well, as Peter Meijer had a very serious chance of winning re-election if he was renominated instead. A mitigating facter is that the new MI-03 went to Joe Biden by over 8 points, though.

[TML]

A possible contender could be Robert Zimmerman since his opponent is someone who is very flawed and has multiple vulnerabilities - and despite this Santos won.

Robert Zimmerman is a Dishonorable Mention for sure, as he had no business losing to a full-on election denier who attended a January 6th rally. However, this loss is not as embarrassing as Laura Gillen or Sean Patrick Maloney, who ran in double digit Joe Biden districts.
[…]

But it does seem that Zimmerman underperformed Biden by double digits, just like Gillen did (Zimmerman by 19 points, Gillen by 17 points). I also felt that Zimmerman, like Gillen, fell into the trap of following Republicans down the crime rabbit hole instead of using Democratic framing on various hot button issues which would have resonated more with voters.

[TML]

Because of the congressional stock trading issue, I would add three incumbent Democratic members of Congress to the dishonorable mentions list: Cindy Axne, Elaine Luria, and Tom Malinowski. Axne and Malinowski were accused of illicit stock trades, while Luria publicly opposed a congressional stock trading ban and thus allowed her opponent to outflank her from the left on this issue.

[kapak44]

A possible contender could be Robert Zimmerman since his opponent is someone who is very flawed and has multiple vulnerabilities - and despite this Santos won.

Robert Zimmerman is a Dishonorable Mention for sure, as he had no business losing to a full-on election denier who attended a January 6th rally. However, this loss is not as embarrassing as Laura Gillen or Sean Patrick Maloney, who ran in double digit Joe Biden districts.
[…]

But it does seem that Zimmerman underperformed Biden by double digits, just like Gillen did (Zimmerman by 19 points, Gillen by 17 points). I also felt that Zimmerman, like Gillen, fell into the trap of following Republicans down the crime rabbit hole instead of using Democratic framing on various hot button issues which would have resonated more with voters.

Laura Gillen's mistakes were far more high profile due to the simmering drama between her, Jacobs, and Keith Corbett's other supporters. I was definitely more aware of how bad her campaign than Robert Zimmerman's was, though, so I believe that Laura Gillen's campaign was slightly worse.

Because of the congressional stock trading issue, I would add three incumbent Democratic members of Congress to the dishonorable mentions list: Cindy Axne, Elaine Luria, and Tom Malinowski. Axne and Malinowski were accused of illicit stock trades, while Luria publicly opposed a congressional stock trading ban and thus allowed her opponent to outflank her from the left on this issue.

You *could* say that all three of them were Dishonorable Mentions, but their GOP opponents were somewhat on the okay side, so I personally do not think they deserve that label since the environment was still redder than 2020 was. Agree that the stock trading issue was an unforced error on all their parts, though.

[Tekken_Guy]

Laura Gillen's mistakes were far more high profile due to the simmering drama between her, Jacobs, and Keith Corbett's other supporters. I was definitely more aware of how bad her campaign than George Zimmerman's was, though, so I believe that Laura Gillen's campaign was slightly worse.

No Democrat is going to vote for the guy who shot Trayvon Martin.

[kapak44]

Laura Gillen's mistakes were far more high profile due to the simmering drama between her, Jacobs, and Keith Corbett's other supporters. I was definitely more aware of how bad her campaign than George Zimmerman's was, though, so I believe that Laura Gillen's campaign was slightly worse.

No Democrat is going to vote for the guy who shot Trayvon Martin.

Gah!! Huge, huge brain fart on my part. Corrected the post, as I did NOT mean to open that particular wound at all. And may Trayvon Martin rest in peace.

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

And finally, I am not taking into account the unresolved CA-13 race, as the jury is still out whether Adam Gray ran a poor enough campaign to blow a race in a district that Joe Biden won by a double digit margin.* (EDIT: His loss is now confirmed. Screw this piece of crap for his colossal incompetence.)

I love these takes where like 600 votes and 0.4% is the difference between a candidate considered not "poor enough" or a "piece of crap" of "colossal incompetence".

[Xing]

For Republicans: Sarah Palin
For Democrats: Sean Patrick Maloney

[It’s so Joever]

I got a Spanish Salas ad…as a non Hispanic person in DC who has never been to the valley in my life. Even what they did spend must have not been great. Ironically I thought it was a sign of Salas possibly making it but ig not.

[kapak44]

And finally, I am not taking into account the unresolved CA-13 race, as the jury is still out whether Adam Gray ran a poor enough campaign to blow a race in a district that Joe Biden won by a double digit margin.* (EDIT: His loss is now confirmed. Screw this piece of crap for his colossal incompetence.)

I love these takes where like 600 votes and 0.4% is the difference between a candidate considered not "poor enough" or a "piece of crap" of "colossal incompetence".

I was already very angry at Adam Gray's campaign for letting this race slip away from him as 2022 ran its course. His campaign was not receptive to feedback that the few volunteers I knew threw at him and failed to change course. The rules I imposed say that I am not counting candidates who won the general election, so I feel the change is justified.

I got a Spanish Salas ad…as a non Hispanic person in DC who has never been to the valley in my life. Even what they did spend must have not been great. Ironically I thought it was a sign of Salas possibly making it but ig not.

Definitely not, and I am chalking this as a result from the fact that Rudy Salas started too late and prevented proper organization efforts to be made in 2021 in order to avoid these mistakes. He is now just a Dishonorable Mention though, thanks to Adam Gray's embarrassing performance.

[Dani Rose]

Discounting crypto-Nazi incumbents like MTG, Boebert, and Gosar, Joe Kent was the worst human being the GOP ran for a House race this cycle. But Majewski was by far the most disastrous cocktail of horrible beliefs, horrible personal morality, and horrible political instincts. Even more than WA-03, in no world should the GOP have allowed Marcy Kaptur to walk away with a Trumpist district in Ohio of all places, and yet.

For us, Maloney. Easily Maloney. In no world should the DCCC Chair have slept through his own reelection campaign in an otherwise very positive midterm, lost, and then whined about progressives afterward instead of owning up to his mistakes, and yet.

[Arizona Iced Tea]

Discounting crypto-Nazi incumbents like MTG, Boebert, and Gosar, Joe Kent was the worst human being the GOP ran for a House race this cycle. But Majewski was by far the most disastrous cocktail of horrible beliefs, horrible personal morality, and horrible political instincts. Even more than WA-03, in no world should the GOP have allowed Marcy Kaptur to walk away with a Trumpist district in Ohio of all places, and yet.

For us, Maloney. Easily Maloney. In no world should the DCCC Chair have slept through his own reelection campaign in an otherwise very positive midterm, lost, and then whined about progressives afterward instead of owning up to his mistakes, and yet.

Majewski was bad but regardless of who the Rs nominated they were not beating Kaptur on Nov8 even with a generic R, just looking at what happened all over the midwest. Majewski was the difference between losing by 13 instead of 3.