May 14 2008
The Candidate Who Almost Wasn’t
One of the strangest stories from last Tuesday’s primary happened in Raleigh during the Democrat primary for State House District 40.
Stan Morse (D) decided to run against incumbent Marilyn Avila (R) only because he thought no one else had entered the race. But it turned out that another Democrat did enter. It being too late to remove his name from the ballot, Morse essentially conceded the race and supported the other guy.
So what do you think happened?
After trying his best to lose, Stan Morse now says he’s in it to win.
Morse won last week’s Democratic primary for the N.C. House seat from District 40, despite endorsing his opponent, campaigning against himself and issuing his concession speech the day before the election. Even his wife voted for the other guy.
Still, Morse carried 55 percent of the Democratic vote in his Republican-leaning district, which includes Raleigh’s northernmost neighborhoods, Wake Forest and Rolesville.
Either the other candidate was so God-awful that primary voters decided to go with Morse, or we need to consider stripping some of these people of their voting privileges, because they obviously haven’t a clue what they’re doing.
As his party’s candidate, Morse said Wednesday he will accept no campaign contributions or endorsements from PACs or special interest groups. He said he will take contributions of $100 or less from individuals, but that he intends to run a low cost, bare bones campaign.
Well yeah, he probably has to now. I doubt contributors will be lining up to fund someone who didn’t even want the nomination. Still, to be on the safe side, maybe Rep. Avila will concede the week before the election- she’ll probably win land in a landslide if she does.
You know, I almost suspect that the guy was engaging in some kind of clever ‘reverse psychology’ ploy. Many of these state legislator races don’t get a lot of ink, so when he came out conceding early, campaign against himself, etc., he probably got more positive name recognition than he could have bought.