Some suggest that Alvarez beat Fletcher with Election Day voters, and there is a hint of truth to that. Fletcher was ahead of Alvarez when the first returns came in. But it doesn’t appear that Fletcher was swamped by a tidal wave of Election Day voting. In fact, it appears that the final numbers fell short of the 40-45 percent predicted based on the early votes.
The dominant narrative seems to be that Fletcher was done in by negative advertising. There were, no doubt, some vicious flip-flop mailers from the Lincoln Club and tough television spots attacking his Assembly voting record from Faulconer. But Fletcher wasn’t swamped in the message battle either. I received more pro-Fletcher pieces than anything, and quite a few anti-Alvarez attacks. Whether he came in first or second in the money battle, he was certainly getting his message out on TV until the end.
The fact is that both of these issues are symptoms of Fletcher’s underlying problem. Despite being a Democrat, he was once again a man without a party, or more specifically, a party machine. There were two days that sealed his fate, and neither was Election Day.
Day one was the day the Democratic Party endorsed David Alvarez, who entered the race looking like the second choice of a Labor Council wanting any Democrat but Fletcher to wage an internecine war with Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez. As a first term councilmember without much city wide profile, viability was a real question. Nothing puts the viability question to rest like the endorsement of a major party, and it comes with access to money and a get out the vote (GOTV) machine.
That also left Fletcher effectively running as an Independent, no matter what his voter registration card says. Still, he might have made it had it not been for problem day number two, when the Republican Party decided they wanted to run against Alvarez in the general. We won’t know until February 2014 if that was a good choice for Republicans, but it was certainly bad for Fletcher. Being attacked as both too conservative and too liberal is hard for any candidate, but it’s especially damaging for someone who recently switched parties.
Why did Republicans choose to attack Fletcher? Polling. Early numbers showed him leading in the primary and beating Faulconer in head to head match-ups. Looking at Fletcher as a dominant front runner makes his loss a surprise. Unfortunately, that view was always colored by name recognition and unable to account for GOTV efforts.
The better way to look at Fletcher was as an Independent, and it’s hard for Independents to win elections precisely because they lack a political machine and take fire from all sides. From that perspective, Fletcher’s loss was no surprise. Rather, it’s a tribute to Fletcher’s strength as a candidate that he made it so close.
