August 29, 2008 06:07 PM UTC

Around a Year Ago in CD-5 News

• 6 Comments
• by: Precinct854

The Who’ll Win in CD5 Poll a year ago shows how different things can look after a year.  

Doug Lamborn – 17 votes (21.25%)

Jeff Crank – 63 votes (78.75%)

The charitable interpretation is that the addition of Rayburn to the mix that killed Crank’s chances.  But there really was reason to think the Lamborn had no chance back then.

The diary it is attached to also has some interesting predictions in retrospect.  A user with the handle Robert predicted that “If Rayburn jumps in and makes it three way, my bet is that he will split the anti-Lamborn vote with Crank and Lamborn will win with a 40-35-25 (Lamborn, Crank, Rayburn).”

The actual results were

Lamborn – 56,171 – 44.5%

Crank   – 16,431 – 29.3%

Rayburn – 14,721 – 26.2%

A fairly close prediction, but the actual show a lot more support for Lamborn or at least for the incumbent.  CD-5 Line was much further from the mark saying that he was “putting odds by a whisker in Crank’s favor in a 3 way.”  

How could we all be so wrong?  Well at that time there were all sorts of diaries about Lamborn accepting a gambling donation, not reporting it, and then threatening constituents who brought it up.  An example is the diary Lamborn Comes Unglued on Aug. 31.  

By September 5th it was looking really bad for Lamborn with ColoradoPols writing a diary with the headline The Day Doug Lamborn Self-Destructed.  

In the end though all the talk of how damaging the House Ethics Investigation might be came to naught.  Hardly anyone was talking about gambling and threats on primary day earlier this month.  Part of that may have been the fact that the Colorado Springs Gazette was much kinder to Lamborn during the scandal than other newspapers.  This comment by CD-5 Line is a pretty good example of that.  He noted that the Post was much harder on the congressman.  While I’m sure that some people in Colorado Springs read the Post and the News, more probably read the Gazette.  The power of a hometown newspaper going easy on a local politician cannot be underestimated.

Plus things do change.  A poll of ColoradoPols users attached to a diary on Sep. 11 last year found a clear plurality of 44.23% thinking Hillary Clinton would be the nominee of the Democratic Party.  And Rudy Giuliani lead in a similar poll for the Republican question.  More on those predictions later.