Dear fellow tax hikers, we know we are very late with this but we sadly have to name the entire Roxanne Qualls campaign as our 2013 Turkey of the Year. This campaign wrote the playbook for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Political experts, including us, determined that Roxanne was the heavy favorite to win. But she not only lost, she got clobbered.
We will focus on her worst mistake - not taking our advice. We implored Roxanne to spend time in the black community. We told her she had to return their phone calls and emails. We tried to convince her to run a dedicated campaign in black neighborhoods. They rejected our advice, telling us that black voters would flock her way once she quoted President Obama a few times and trotted out the endorsements of Yvette Simpson and Wendell Young.
The Qualls campaign clinched their defeat when they refused to take our advice one final time. We pleaded with Roxanne to repudiate the racist statements of her supporters alleging that
John Cranley was hiring too many black people for his campaign. She had to condemn these racist words. Black voters would never vote for a candidate who is accusing them of being bought off, especially when Roxanne's people weren't holding white people to the same standards.
This campaign could have done so much better. We failed to convince people why the streetcar is the best idea since the stadiums. We didn't make people believe in the parking plan. Not enough people knew about Roxanne's pivotal role in
helping Bob Bedinghaus implement his stadiums deal. Streetcars, stadiums, parking - we should have owned those issues.
Thanks to one misstep after another, Roxanne Qualls pissed away a comfortable lead and turned it into a landslide defeat. For this, the entire Roxanne Qualls campaign wins our 2013 Turkey of the Year.
