Mailbox Full of Politics
More and more of our mail is turning to politics. It makes sense because it's that time of year. Election Day is now just under 4 weeks away.
The political mailers we're getting aren't what you'd think, though. In other parts of the country, races for governor, senate, and Congress are high visibility. Here those offices are up for election, too, but those candidates are not the ones campaigning hard or spending lots of money on advertisements.
Why not? Frankly it's because most of those races are not competitive. In our Congressional district, for example, we have a well-liked Democrat incumbent who's progressive on social issues and fiscally moderate, opposed by a bigoted, conspiracy theory-spouting crackpot Republican. The Democrat will likely win with 70% of the vote. (Decide for yourself which is scarier- that Democrat incumbents coast to victory here or that bigoted, conspiracy theory-spouting crackpots actually win 30% of the vote against reasonable competitors.) There's a similar pattern in most of the statewide offices.
So which races are competitive and spending money on advertising? Aside from one state assembly race where one of the candidates (or her surrogates) has started a name-calling fight against the other, it's ballot propositions. And it's not even all ballot propositions, but two in particular, Prop 26 and Prop 27, both concerning legalizing sports betting. Expanding legalized gambling is a politically contentious issue, yet there's billions of dollars to be made on it, so that's why there's a flood of advertising around it.
The political mailers we're getting aren't what you'd think, though. In other parts of the country, races for governor, senate, and Congress are high visibility. Here those offices are up for election, too, but those candidates are not the ones campaigning hard or spending lots of money on advertisements.
Why not? Frankly it's because most of those races are not competitive. In our Congressional district, for example, we have a well-liked Democrat incumbent who's progressive on social issues and fiscally moderate, opposed by a bigoted, conspiracy theory-spouting crackpot Republican. The Democrat will likely win with 70% of the vote. (Decide for yourself which is scarier- that Democrat incumbents coast to victory here or that bigoted, conspiracy theory-spouting crackpots actually win 30% of the vote against reasonable competitors.) There's a similar pattern in most of the statewide offices.
So which races are competitive and spending money on advertising? Aside from one state assembly race where one of the candidates (or her surrogates) has started a name-calling fight against the other, it's ballot propositions. And it's not even all ballot propositions, but two in particular, Prop 26 and Prop 27, both concerning legalizing sports betting. Expanding legalized gambling is a politically contentious issue, yet there's billions of dollars to be made on it, so that's why there's a flood of advertising around it.