Daniel TilsonSo Alex Sink lost another big one.
Not exactly a surprise.
After all, this is the same Sink who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in 2010, enabling an ultra-conservative, ethically tainted multimillionaire businessman to get elected Florida governor.
Like Rick Scott then, Republican David Jolly beat Sink in Tuesday’s CD 13 special election as a first-time candidate with little name recognition at the campaign’s outset.
But Sink’s supposed strengths as a longtime businesswoman, prominent civic figure and former Chief Financial Officer in the state, failed to offset her weaknesses.
While Jolly deserves credit for handling and presenting himself well enough to win, the cold, hard truth is that Alex Sink lost.
To think she lost because of CD 13 demographics would be a mistake.
Out of 460,000 registered voters in the district, about 160,000 are Democrats, 170,000 Republican — not a big deficit. That leaves about 112,000 registered with No Party Affiliation and nearly 18,000 in assorted “minor” parties.
While Sink’s 2-point loss to Jolly is actually better than the party has done in past district elections, it’s little comfort given that broadly popular GOP Congressman Bill Young served for 42 years, until his death last October.
While it’s true CD 13 voters are a little more Republican, mostly white and somewhat older than the overall Florida population, none of those should excuse how Sink lost.
And lamenting Tuesday’s election turnout of about 38 percent of all eligible voters, while worth bemoaning, is missing the point.
Sink didn’t lose because Democratic and independent voters failed to turn out in large enough numbers.
She, and her campaign, failed the voters, not the other way around.
Voters — most especially younger ones, hard-working and lower income ones juggling jobs and families and more — need a gripping reason to engage with a candidate or a campaign.
You can talk all you want about civics, the people who’ve died fighting for our voting rights, and the preciousness and high-percentage exercise of such rights in other nations.
But if you want to win elections here and now in the America that is what it is, you’ve got to go for the jugular.
Mind you, that needn’t and shouldn’t be thought of in any negative way.
In fact, if you do it right, it’s about attacking the issues in boldly forthright, uncompromisingly honest ways.
You know, the opposite of the Alex Sink, Blue Dog Dem style.
As talented, lovely and likeable as she may be, Sink ran for governor in 2010 and Congress in 2014 while carefully trying not to lose. She played it down the middle with so little spine it’s no wonder she wouldn’t stand up for more than one CD 13 debate.
Regale me all you want with polling and focus groups and triangulated messaging and media meant to woo one sub-group while not offending another too much.
But if you can’t make a visceral connection with disengaged Democratic and independent voters, you lose.
Most GOP candidates and campaigns unashamedly demagogue issues in ways that tap into greed, fear and anger, while far too many Democratic candidates and campaigns cautiously, self-consciously tap dance around “sensitive” issues.
Go wishy-washy on Obamacare like Sink did, you lose.
Support the Simpson-Bowles Social Security sellout plan like Sink did, you lose.
Fail to connect the dots between restoring fairness to our tax and labor policies, and restoring economic opportunity and stability to disengaged working poor and middle class voters, you lose.
And as the GOP-gridlocked U.S. House of Representatives proves (along with the Big Business-Republican dominated Florida Legislature), when too many Democrats lose, we all lose.
A New York University graduate, Daniel Tilson owns a Boca Raton-based firm, Full Cup Media, offering “a la carte” and custom-bundled packages of communication services. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
