A Republican strategist sent me a note of response to this last post looking at the city of San Diego political scene through the goggles the presidential candidates’ great war is providing us.
This Republican had a message of humility about the party’s local prowess:
The ‘lame’ column was pretty good._
Remember, though, our side ran a shitload of lame campaigns in the city for a_long time. For years, in the 90s, we should have held the old 78th and the_overlapping senate seat. We also managed to lose control of the council by_losing safe GOP seats. We lost control of Oceanside, a GOP bastion, for_several years._And we ran a totally lame campaign for governor with Lungren.
All true. I never wanted to communicate that local Republicans were all unfailing geniuses. But this reinforces the point: They did have some trouble in the 90s and they learned from it all.
Local Democrats aren’t even putting themselves in a position to learn in many cases.