Wednesday, June 11, 2014

About that Lindsey Graham Victory

With all of the disruption by the establishment over the historic loss of Eric Cantor, I have heard lots of people opining that Lindsey Graham's victory in South Carolina shows that people really are not against amnesty for illegal aliens.

B.S. Let's see about that race:

According to Ballotpedia, Graham spent a total of $3,500,510.52 on this campaign by April 15 of this year (I'll get better, i.e. more recent, stats when they become available). Lee Bright spent $217,467.71, Nancy Mace spent $388,435.38, Richard Cash spent $251,359.33, Det Bowers $44,808.21, Bill Connor $109,303.92, and Benjamin Dunn $0.00.

That means that as of April 15, Graham had spent $3.5 million, while his opponents had spent a total of about about $1.01 million (exactly $1,011,285.00). So Graham outspent his opponents by almost 3.5 times, he' an incumbent, and still he only got 56.3-58.4% of the vote (reports vary and the final official tally is not available as far as I can tell).

Don't let the Graham situation detract from the defeat of Cantor. Graham was expected to win. His win is not significant the way a win by an outraised 25 to 1 and outspent 40 to 1 previously unknown challenger is.

(Note: I will try to get all of my figures updated, and everything sourced, in the next few days as more information becomes available). That is all.

1 comment:

DH said...

Honestly, look at the field that ran against him to see why he won! (I'm from the state.)

The runner up had some minor name recognition as a state Senator but that was it. He also had questions to the tune of millions surrounding bad business debt. None of the other candidates possessed any real semblance of a voting record, and more or less overlapped on most issues, splintering any shot at coalescence behind a specific candidate.