Evan
Member
That's odd because if you follow Battle on Twitter it seems he was doing exactly that, running a statewide campaign. He was the first candidate to visit every county in the state and constantly had appearances all over the state in recent months. I think his statewide TV ads started several weeks ago as well.
I'll sit at home before I vote for Ivey. I can't in good conscience vote for someone who is an unelected incumbent who refuses to participate in public debates and town halls. It is very telling and makes me think her health and mind aren't fit to lead the state.
He didn't build out the type of field organization and make the county level contacts he needed to make. I don't know if it is his campaign manager or what, but I've read each of his campaign finance filings as they were posted. He was at a severe fundraising disadvantage, but he still wasted precious funds on TV spots that were poorly executed and would have very little impact. He suffered from a lack of name recognition outside of Northern AL and the major cities.
I'm not saying he sat on his money maker. It was always going to be tremendously difficult vs. the 800lb gorilla incumbent that dodges you in debates and sucks the oxygen out by making economic announcements to serve as free media exposure. Sadly, the Alabama media are fairly stupid and let her get away with it. The reported her economic announcements as straight news. The media types that took Ivey on are the type GOP voters don't trust and don't care about.
Battle needed to run a very aggressive insurgent campaign and put Ivey on the defensive. He's just not that type of candidate. It's not his style.
Trust me, no way in hell I'll vote for Ivey. I'm just as frustrated and I liked Battle well enough. If Ivey wasn't the incumbent Governor he'd have cleaned her clock. But, alas, that wasn't the race.
Whats amazing is a number of incumbent GOP judges lost. So this wasn't your typical case of voters just opting for the incumbent out of ignorance. Clearly they bought the same argument that Kory did. That's the fault of all of Ivey's opponents. They didn't want to get their hands dirty by aggressively taking on a grandmother, but that was the only way to win.
It didn't help that Alabama voters gonna Alabama.