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December 16, 2005
 Candidate
Gilchrist: "Rocky Balboa Never Won a Fight in the
First Round." Grinch Guzzardi: “Too Bad!”
By
Joe Guzzardi
Even if you live in
Maine, you owe
Jim Gilchrist big time. And for Californians like
me, who are actively involved in immigration reform, we
owe Gilchrist twice over.
First, concerned Americans from
coast to coast are indebted to Gilchrist for being,
along with
Chris Simcox, the co-founder of the
Minuteman Project.
Gilchrist and Simcox forced the
nation to focus on just
how easy securing the border between Mexico and the
U.S. would be. And the Minutemen
pulled it off without the
universally-predicted violence.
Then Gilchrist, securing his place
in our hearts forever, fought an uphill and valiant
fight in the December 6th special
Congressional election in Orange County’s District 48.
Running on the American Independent
ticket, Gilchrist finished a strong third, with about a
quarter of the votes cast.
The winner, Republican John
Campbell, is a California State Assemblyman with a
long and well documented record of supporting illegal
immigration. Democrat Steve Young placed second, a
mere 2,000 votes ahead of Gilchrist.
In today’s column, two former
California candidates for high office—Republican
Walter Moore who ran for Mayor of Los Angeles
earlier this year and
yours truly, a
Democrat in the 2003 Recall Gray Davis election—will
weigh in with a post-election analysis.
First of all, some statistical
information: as usual in California, the
turn out was abysmal. Of 406,000 registered voters,
only 96,000 showed up.
Moore calls Gilchrist’s heroic
effort a "win." On his website
Mooreisbetter.com, he
provides a breakdown of the vote:
"Consider
the numbers. Gilchrist got 25% of the vote (i.e.,
23,237 votes), even though his American Independent
party constitutes just 2% of the registered
voters in his district. So where did he get the rest?
Assuming that voter turnout was essentially the same
regardless of party affiliation, the answer is as
follows:
Republicans provided 5.3% of Gilchrist's 25%: the
Republican candidate got just 44.7% of the vote,
even though the party constitutes 50% of the
registered voters. In other words, over 10% of the
Republicans voting were willing to cross party lines
to vote for the candidate they deemed best.
Independents provided the remaining 17.7% of
Gilchrist's 25%; they constitute 19.1% of the
district's registered voters. Democrats, however, did
Gilchrist no favors: they constitute 27.1% of the
registered voters, and their candidate got 27.96% of the
vote -- not much more than Gilchrist."
Ending his essay on an upbeat
note, Moore concluded:
"When
is the last time you heard of a third-party candidate
getting 25% of the vote in a California election?
That's huge. That 25% may encourage, say, another 10% in
the next election to vote for the best candidate, rather
than the lesser of two evils. Think ‘snowball effect’:
25% turns into 35%, which emboldens another 10%, and,
after a few elections, you could get over 50% of the
people actually voting for the best candidate,
regardless of party affiliation."
When I spoke to Moore about Gilchrist’s performance, he
told me:
"People keep
outsmarting themselves by voting for candidates they
hate, thinking they must settle for the 'lesser of two
evils,' rather than someone they support. It's a
reasonable strategy, but only if you focus on the short
term."
And Moore offered this advice to
California voters who will soon be facing decision time
in the 2006 Congressional election:
"In
the long term, we voters need to start voting for the
best candidate in a given election, regardless of
whether he can win that particular election.
Consistently voting for the best candidate is the only
way we can encourage other voters to do the same thing.
The more consistently we vote for the best candidate,
the sooner such a candidate will achieve the 'critical
mass' necessary to win, namely, more votes than the
other candidates. If instead people continue to outsmart
themselves by voting for candidates they hate, then
parties will continue to take their votes for granted,
and the only party hacks will run for office."
I agree 100% with everything that
Moore says. And I agree that Gilchrist plowed new ground
for
immigration sanity candidates with his strong
showing. Gilchrist paved the way and provided
inspiration for those who will follow.
But the question that nags at me:
will voters ever wake up to the importance of
supporting the
enlightened underdog—no matter how remote his
chances of victory may be?
Will they ever grasp that a
vote for the obviously
stronger immigration reform candidate is
NOT "wasted"?
At the risk of being perceived as
the
Christmas Grinch, some unpleasant realities about
the election results—created by naïve voters— must be
faced. Let’s acknowledge them and hope to learn:
- Every missed opportunity
hurts. Anyone who lives in
California knows that time is not on our side.
- Gilchrist’s loss to
Campbell—a known panderer to illegal aliens—gives
fodder to the likes of
Tamar Jacoby. I can hear her now:
"Immigration doesn’t resonate at the ballot box."
Given the easy access Jacoby (and her peers) have to
the mainstream media, that’s bad.
Nevertheless, my cautionary
opinion not withstanding, Gilchrist himself remains
positive.
When I asked Gilchrist to
summarize his experience, he said,
"I
was labeled as a
‘one issue’ candidate even though several other
major issues flow from immigration laws not enforced. If
you ask me, my opponents from the
Republican and
Democratic parties were ‘no issue’ candidates. They
relied strictly on their party affiliation to garner
votes. I clobbered them in every public debate, yet
their party minions swore their allegiance to their
party rather than to their country."
Added Gilchrist:
"My
race was astoundingly victorious. I sucked away 25.5% of
the voters in a district that had only 2% of them
registered as Independent Party members. So, that is
proof enough to me that not all party minions vote the
official party line. Now, I just have to get more
Republicans and Democrats to come my way and vote for
their country rather than for their party."
Gilchrist, who is likely to run
again in 2006 although which office he might seek is
undecided, left this battle cry for
California voters:
"This
election was round one. Even
Rocky Balboa never won a fight in the first round."
Joe Guzzardi [email
him], an instructor in English at the Lodi
Adult School, has been writing a weekly newspaper column
since 1988. This column is exclusive to VDARE.COM. |
