tully has a column today that, were i to summarize in "shorter" form, i would condense thusly: "jill long thompson won and jim schellinger lost, therefore long thompson's campaign was great and schellinger's campaign was teh suck." but i don't want to do that, because frankly this is the first tully column that's even been worth reading in at least a month, as recently he's been phoning it in while chasing the national spotlight.

the column has some good insights into the schellinger campaign's missteps, and i recommend it for those who're interested in that topic. what bugged me about it was the implication (both in the column and elsewhere) that JLT campaign hadn't made the kind of missteps schellinger had—of course, tully already showed his colors last month in that regard. the fact is that both candidates ran lousy campaigns. both candidates wasted 2007. both struggled to be seen and to articulate a vision. and yes, the race was completely overshadowed by the presidential race, but only because both candidates failed to make themselves known months ago, back when everyone assumed indiana's primary would be meaningless as usual. (JLT had built-in name recognition from her past service in congress, which helped her greatly.)

in the end, i went with schellinger, as did most liberal bloggers. it's weird; i can't think of a single liberal blogger who was on record as a JLT supporter, aside from a couple pseudonymous commenters on blue indiana. schellinger wasn't just the candidate of choice for party insiders; he had the support of the blogs as well.

why is that? there are a few reasons—resentment about JLT's negative campaigning was a big one—but perhaps the most important was blogger outreach. the JLT campaign did none that i'm aware of. her online presence is weak overall and her campaign's attitude toward bloggers has ranged from indifference to hostility. in contrast, schellinger struggled with this for awhile, but eventually turned it all around when he hired jen wagner. by the end, his blogger outreach was excellent, but it wasn't enough to put him over the top.

so jill long thompson is now the nominee for governor. i'll be happy to vote for her come november, but she's really going to have to step up her game if she wants to beat mitch daniels. mitch's unpopularity makes him vulnerable, but he's still a strong campaigner sitting on a lot of money, and is going to be a lot more difficult to beat than schellinger was.

in election other news, how about that andré carson? it might have been a very different race if it had been between two or three candidates, but instead there were a nonillion of them all attacking each other, dividing the hater vote. pity the poor haters: they thought they had a shot this year.

and for president, hillary squeaked out ahead, but not by enough to really matter. it's been apparent for awhile that obama will be the nominee. in fact, that was apparent before indiana's primary, but the media politley pretended that indiana's primary was actually going to matter for the first time in 40 years. you never know... come 2048, maybe indiana will be the tie-breaker between robama and hillbot. ¶

I can't buy the Jen Wagner thing as the reason bloggers were with Schellinger - that happened late in the game and most every blog was already on board. This goes too for the supposed "negative" capaigning. It may have been the early and obvious bias of TDW - which does trace to Jen, but not after her hire. Or it may simply have been the new-ness. I'm not sure, but it was terribly unfair and unfortunate for the party as a whole. The "liberal" bloggers all chose the less liberal candidates. ¶

While I never came out publicly in support of Jill out of respect for Jennifer, I have to admit I pulled the level for her.

As a side note: her latest communications person isn't too bad. He's still doesn't get blogs, that's for sure, but he's better than the others. He offered me an interview with Jill right as Hillary Clinton made her 1st appearance in Indiana. We had to cancel the interview because of Hillary and it never got rescheduled. ¶

There was plenty of anti-Schellinger messages in the blogs. HFFT posted a lot on the Washington Township Property tax crisis, CSO Architects (Schellinger) and their involvement with Washington Township Schools, Superintendent Mervilde, and its board. ¶

i said "liberal blogs", which HFFT is most assuredly not. ¶

Amen. HFFT's whole Schellinger hate tip was simply another excercise in who is pissing Miss Ann off now. That's all it's ever about. ¶

Schelling never pissed me off. Hell I barely knew anything about him. I'm not taxed in Washington Township. I actually knew little about the school superintendent until I started getting phone calls and emails from taxpayers who were angry.

All that Schellinger inside intel came from people in Washington Township who emailed it to me to print.

You people sure do get your facts screwed up a lot.

Anyway, I get really angry with anyone who tries to take the wealth of another in covert ways. It is immoral.

I'm interested in helping to keep people in their homes and to keep their wealth.

I don't think the government (based on history) is a very good steward of other's wealth. In fact, they are wasteful and full of opportunists, liars, and cheats. ¶

In other words, it is my money and the hell with those in need. ¶