On Jan. 6, the state filing deadline, a Santorum volunteer had brought to the board of elections an envelope containing nominating petitions for a slate of three Santorum delegates in the 13th, the State Journal-Register reports.
But the petitions were never submitted. A volunteer inadvertently failed to take them out of the envelope, the Journal Register reports, and the envelope wound up in the trash.
In Alabama, there are 47 delegates that have to be signed up to represent the candidate--but Santorum has not managed to do so:
Santorum?
Forty-three.
“He’s missing four spots,” Kluck said – two spots in the 7th District and two at-large delegate spots – meaning that even if Santorum wins big in the state next week, he won’t be eligible for all of Alabama’s 47 bound delegates.
And then in some places, such as the District of Columbia, Santorum’s camp hasn’t even tried at all.There are things about Santorum that I like, but when you aren't prepared to handle very basic nuts and bolts details of running a campaign, it does not give me any confidence about his ability to go up against the Zero (who can't do anything else well besides run a campaign). I don't like Romney, but at least he seems to know how to organize a political campaign.
I think what you are seeing is a side effect of the fact that Santorum (and his team) hasn't run a nationwide campaign before.
ReplyDeleteOf course, a slightly smarter campaign-management team might have been able to sweep up the leftovers of the State Campaign teams from other people who tried to move from State-level campaigns to National-level campaigns in 2008. (Huckabee's local team, for example. )
Just pulling thoughts out of thin air here, and I'm willing to defer judgement to anyone who has more experience running a campaign.
But that's my analysis of what went wrong.