| Patrick Ziegler, the tea partier, had no political experience, unless you call being a volunteer for Mike Huckabee's 2008 dead-by-the-time-NY-voted campaign political experience.
He wanted to be the GOP's NY-20 candidate, but the GOP bosses had another idea -- Army Col. Chris Gibson, four Bronze Stars, Combat Infrantryman's Badge, Ph.D. from Cornell, born and raised in the district.
So Ziegler bowed out in April, and hired on with Gibson as his campaign manager.
Evidently Ziegler was not up to that task.
According to his wife, who cheerleads for Gibson on local tea party blogs, Ziegler was relieved of the campaign manager job in June, so he could concentrate on the only political thing he knew -- getting the few dozen tea partiers to volunteer for Gibson.
Ziegler eventually lost even that job in September, and was moved over to the "RNC Victory office" in Albany.
His wife, naturally, tries to gild the dead lily of her husband's political career:
The campaign has an executive director who Patrick and Chris recruited in June so Patrick could focus on the field operations, volunteers, policy, etc. They needed someone with more campaign experience and connections to make higher level decisions regarding media buys, fundraising, etc. Patrick and Chris are new to politics so they had no experience in these areas.
The RNC was setting up local victory offices because they see many races in NY as winnable. They have a wealth of resources, including a system that allows campaigns to specifically target the unafilliated and Independent voters who will win this election. Normally it would cost a campaign tens of thousands of dollars to gain access to this vital info from which to work phone banks, door-to-door efforts, etc. The problem? They had no one on the ground they trusted to manage these resources. They spoke with the Gibson campaign and it was determined that the best thing for Chris, and other local campaigns (like Danz, Busch, etc), would be if Patrick worked the field operations from the RNC and they in turn allocated all their resources to these local campaigns since they trusted Patrick to get the job done. This has been HUGE in efforts to win these elections. Patrick has always stated he will do whatever he needs to help Chris win, and Chris and Patrick determined this is an incredible opportunity to use resources that will ultimately target the thousands of votes that may determine this, and other local election. The Gibson campaign is stronger now with Patrick working field operations with the RNC while the executive director continues to oversee the Gibson campaign.
Yeah, right.
Mrs. Ziegler hints at why she had to defend her husband's obvious, serial demotions:
There are a lot of ignorant people out there who are quick to judge the situation, both in the media and sadly in the Tea Party as well.
That's right, some local tea partiers, including several of their leaders, are pissed that Ziegler reneged on his pledge to primary Gibson, and that he was rewarded for that with $5,000 a month.
That's the internal tea party problem Gibson has.
The external problem is that he is still the tea party candidate who would support the Party of No in Washington if elected.
Polls have shown that the tea party is not that popular across the country; the only public poll of NY-20 (Siena's on Sept. 17)found that just 38 percent had a favorable opinion of the tea party movement.
Not coincidentally, Gibson got 37 percent in the head-to-head question in that poll.
Tea party extremism only appeals to the GOP base, and Republican candidates in New York need more than that to win.
With tea partier Crazy Carl Paladino atop the Republican ticket this year, winning over moderates will be especially difficult for candidates like Gibson. |
