Crunching Numbers

Part of developing a campaign strategy involves studying results and seeing the strengths and weaknesses of your opponents. In that light, I've looked very closely at the results of the September primary.

Below is a table comparing the Rebecca Cave's results in this 2007 primary with the results of 2005. (Click on the image below to see a readable image of the spreadsheet.)

By looking at the results on a precinct-by-precinct basis, we can see where Cave has gained or lost support since she first ran two years ago, and how her campaign strategy has played in the field.

A few observations stand out to me.

• Although she is an incumbent, Cave's percentage of the primary vote declined by 9 points between 2007 and 2005.
• Turnout was up in every precinct in the city. However, only in 4 precincts (1, 2, 15, 16) did Cave's votes increase more than turnout for that precinct. In 12 of 16 precincts, Cave got a smaller percentage of the vote this year.
  
• In fact, in 7 of 16 precincts, Cave received fewer raw votes in 2007 than 2005, despite the higher turnout.
  
• Cave received fewer raw votes in 3 of the 5 precincts where she did best in 2005; her percentage performance declined in 4 of the 5.
• The worst change for Cave was in her home precinct, Precinct 10, where she lost almost half of her voters – 37 votes in 2007 versus 72 in 2005, and a decline in vote share from 74% to 33%.
• Cave's best performance was in Precinct 16, where she and her allies on the council have worked very hard to win over residents with the South Leg moratorium, with some success.
  
• The three precincts where Cave did best are home to her allies: P2 (Mayor Longrie), P15 (allied candidate Rokke), and P16 (Councilmember Hjelle).

In the big picture, what I find most striking is that the people who were won over by the biggest promises in the last election cycle (the Gladstone area, where the scaremongering and misinformation campaigns were focused two years ago) are the ones who expressed the most dissatisfaction at the ballot box after actually seeing Cave and her majority in office.

Poor Ms. Cave

I see that the Maplewood City Election Voters Guide has been updated for the general election. At least one item in the voters guide yells out at me for attention.

I remember someone (George?) trying to make a case in the comments section on Will Rossbach's blog that the $1000 sign fine was going to take money from kids mouths. I presume that the mouths were those of 'becca's kids.

Well, before George, or whomever it was, cries foul, they should ponder how much lunch money is being taken by having the kids attend private school in the first place. Can you say (very conservatively) $12,000 per year?

Don't whine to me about how poor you are when you are pumping out $1000 EACH MONTH for something you are entitled to receive...for free!

And what does this say about the decision making for the city? First, she guts the Parks department because there is not enough money. Then she turns around and rallies to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on "protecting" the parks and open space through conservation easments.

Forget "Poor Ms. Cave." How about Poor Judgement Ms. Cave?

New Business Development

I do hope, in the next City News, that Councilmember Cave adds our city's thriving outrage manufacturing industry to the list of new and relocated businesses that she takes credit for.

Don't Sell the Parks. Sell the Community Center.

Monday's meetings harken back to the earler days of this blog. There has not been nearly this much fun stuff in one evening for some time.

This first paragraph really wasn't a part of tonight's meeting, but...'becca and queen d don't want to sell the parks. They have certainly have made us all painfully aware of that (to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars in conservation easment funds). If they loved the parks so much, then why did they gut the parks department?

So, how does this tie into Monday's meeting? Well, it sounds like now, even though we don't want to sell the parks, we are OK with selling/trading part of the community center and possibly, later on, the space above the parks in the form of electronic signage.

Maybe if the three musketeers gave us first class parks and open space, people would fight to their death to protect them. No need for a conservation easement.

"Unreasonable and Illogical"

As a follow-up to my last post, I notice that a three judge panel just ruled (and it hardly needs any further commentary):

[Erik Hjelle] testified repeatedly that by using the phrase “Maplewood Police and Fire Endorse Rebecca Cave,” he intended to communicate that Ms. Cave had the support of all Maplewood firefighters. Neither Hjelle nor the MFA have the authority to speak for the Department or the MPFA, and the evidence is undisputed that neither of these organizations has agreed to endorse Ms. Cave . . .

Mr. Hjelle testified that he relied on the Fire Chief’s apparent permission to allow paid-per-call firefighters to use the phrase “Maplewood Fire” on T-shirts and other apparel as the basis for believing that he could use the same phrase in an endorsement. This extrapolation is unreasonable and illogical, as are his efforts to seek trademark protection, on his own behalf, for a phrase and logo used by the City of Maplewood to identify its Fire Department.

Update: The OAH now has the text of the judges' findings in easy-to-browse HTML.