CAMPAIGN FUNDAMENTALS WON THE DAY IN THE 2022 PRIMARY

June 15, 2022

Rob Lauer Political Reporter

Yesterday, the winners of the Republican primary outworked and out-raised their opponents, period. And Clark County Republicans ruled the day. From Lombardo to Jim Marchant to Michele Fiore to Stavros Anthony, every single major candidate based in Clark County was pushed across the finish line by overwhelming votes from Clark County.

Lombardo so far, has 31K votes to Joey Gilbert’s 12K votes in Clark County. Local City Council members Stavros Anthony and Michele Fiore also benefited from Clark County votes. Vegas based Jim Marchant defeated his far better funded opponent, Northerner Jesse Haw. But all these winners had something else in common. They all worked tirelessly raising money and campaigning longer than their opponents. And they all had strong, experienced campaign consultants to guide them. April Becker has been working CD3 since February 2021, raising money and going to tons of local events. I bumped into Lombardo back in July 2021 at a restaurant where he was already meeting with donors and working hard. Jim Marchant has been running since January 2021 crisscrossing the state and the country. All these folks worked really hard spending hours every day on the phone raising money and building their campaign war chests.

Winning Clark County costs money. Name ID cost money and most of the winners had a long history with voters worth millions in some cases. Most of the newcomers to politics thought they could buy name ID and win but candidates with a long history carried the day in statewide races.

And in the local races, I watched in honor as many good folks refused to do the fundamentals and knock doors. If you want to win school board and State Assembly races you must walk and knock on doors. Instead, they wasted their time going to Republican weekly events with the same 300 folks. The time they wasted they could have actually spoke with thousands of voters and won.

Many of the newbies thought the fundamentals didn’t apply to them and they were “different” kind of candidates. At the end of the day ever race is about defining yourself (Name ID) and defining your opponent (attack ads), all of which requires money to communicate with voters. Without the money to get your message out you cannot win.

And then there are those who refused to go on the attack. We had a dismal turn out. Only 334,405 voters turned out statewide (18.36%). Yesterday, only the most loyal voters came out. Attack ads work when they agitate voters about the issued they care about. Voters, especially in primaries, need prodding.

And Trump’s endorsement at the end of the day didn’t help Lombardo and Laxalt, their long history, hard work won the day.

Yes, long boring hours of hard work are required to win races. Exactly why I don’t want to run. lol