Karen Kwiatkowski need her own sub-forum [It's up now]

Absent a poll (a real poll, not a straw poll), the best indicator we have of support is donations from people within the district.

Goodlatte has received 98% of the donations from Virginia residents.

Of Kwiatkowski's donations, 86% have come from outside of Virginia.

Karen Kwiatkowski is great on the issues, other than her support for the Fair tax. She's worth voting for. She has no chance of winning.

All liberty candidates are long shots. But there are better odds. Art Robinson, for example, has 30% of the in-state donations and the totals are so low that he could realistically end up raising more than Peter DeFazio and he didn't exactly get slaughtered in his first attempt in 2010. Thomas Massie may have a realistic chance. David Simpson is already a Texas state rep and deserves re-election. Even Evan Feinberg, although still very much a long shot, has better odds than Kwiatkowski.
 
enoch150 said:
She has no chance of winning.
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This is not true. She does indeed have a chance, but honestly, nobody really knows what kind of chance she has yet.

Goodlatte has trounced all competitors for the last 20 years, but those competitors have been Democrats, independents, and a Libertarian in a heavily Republican district. You don't think that a Republican who is unhappy with Goodlatte would suddenly vote for a Democrat, do you? He has never had a primary challenger before so we're in uncharted waters. And this is an open primary. Independents and Democrats can vote in it.

I started canvassing for Karen this weekend. The vast majority of people I spoke with were genuinely interested and curious about Karen. Whether this translates into support and eventual votes only time will tell. There were a couple of folks who were obviously anti-Goodlatte when I knocked on their doors, but were pro-Kwiatkowski when I left. One guy I spoke with on Saturday asked for a few of Karen's palm cards so that he could take them to some friends at Church on Sunday. I didn't meet any pro-Goodlatte people this weekend at all.

An underfunded and understaffed campaign will yield pretty predictable results. If the volunteers show up, we won't need a million dollars to make this a competitive race.
 
I wish I were in her district. I'll be campaigning for Ken Vaughn in VA-11, which is a pretty wide-open race due to redistricting. http://vaughnforcongress.com

For anyone else in VA, I have been making quite a few contacts in the party and have identified a number of liberty candidates that could use your help, so PM me or post in the Virginia forum here for details.
 
anaconda said:
Sounds like the incumbent isn't terribly popular.
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Says who, besides those who work for the Kwiatkowski campaign? Kwiatkowski herself has admitted to voting for Goodlatte several times in the past.

anaconda said:
Why can't she win? How much money would it take?
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She needs enough money to build a time machine. Then go back and run for county office and state general assembly before going after this office. I lived in rural Virginia for a while. It's very easy to get a start in politics by running for local office in many places. I know one place where they hold elections in someone's garage and the Mayor is a bagger at Food Lion.

Massie is a county manager and spent time building a local base of support before running for that office.
Amash started by running for an open state general assembly seat.
Robinson has already run against an incumbent and lost, but he established some name recognition and he can build off of his previous campaign.
Paul ran against an incumbent in 1974 and lost. He only won in 1976 when the office was vacant and he had already established his name a bit from the previous election.

Kwiatkowski will have a somewhat better chance if she runs again in 2014. Not good, but better. She would improve her odds more by running for lower offices and building up a resume and local reputation until the Congressional seat is vacant.
 
cjm said:
Goodlatte has trounced all competitors for the last 20 years, but those competitors have been Democrats, independents, and a Libertarian in a heavily Republican district. You don't think that a Republican who is unhappy with Goodlatte would suddenly vote for a Democrat, do you? He has never had a primary challenger before so we're in uncharted waters. And this is an open primary. Independents and Democrats can vote in it.
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You said it yourself: it's a heavily Republican district. There just aren't enough Democrats that will turn out to vote in a Republican primary.

I hope she wins. I just don't think it's going to happen this year.
 
enoch150 said:
Says who, besides those who work for the Kwiatkowski campaign? Kwiatkowski herself has admitted to voting for Goodlatte several times in the past.



She needs enough money to build a time machine. Then go back and run for county office and state general assembly before going after this office. I lived in rural Virginia for a while. It's very easy to get a start in politics by running for local office in many places. I know one place where they hold elections in someone's garage and the Mayor is a bagger at Food Lion.

Massie is a county manager and spent time building a local base of support before running for that office.
Amash started by running for an open state general assembly seat.
Robinson has already run against an incumbent and lost, but he established some name recognition and he can build off of his previous campaign.
Paul ran against an incumbent in 1974 and lost. He only won in 1976 when the office was vacant and he had already established his name a bit from the previous election.

Kwiatkowski will have a somewhat better chance if she runs again in 2014. Not good, but better. She would improve her odds more by running for lower offices and building up a resume and local reputation until the Congressional seat is vacant.
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Rand never ran for anything. He skipped right over to Senate and won in a land slide. Why would Virginia be so dramatically different? The incumbent senator in Utah couldn't even get his own party's nomination because he had voted with the establishment on one too many things. Sounds like this is what Good latte has been up to.
 
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Crystallas said:
I have wanted to post more about her, but I held back because there was no sub-forum. Her and Dan O'Connor are going to be SERIOUS liberty allies for many years to come. We can always move the sub-forum into an archive, if they don't get elected.
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Dan O'Connor is an interesting candidate. He's great on the issues, but has the same disadvantages as Kwiatkowski in that he's basically unknown in the district and running against a well funded, well entrenched incumbent. But he does have a couple of advantages that Kwiatkowski doesn't.

In as much as I detest putting people in groups, other people don't mind putting themselves in groups and voting with a group. The incumbent is hispanic and relies on the 40% of the district which is hispanic to vote for her. O'Connor speaks fluent Chinese and Nydia Velazquez doesn't. The district includes china town. 20% of the district is Asian, 30% white. O'Connor did the math and decided to give it a shot.

Nydia Velazquez has a million dollar advantage, but almost all of that comes from PACs or is left over from previous elections. There is very, very little money being raised from individuals in the district itself. O'Connor actually has small chance at pulling an upset victory if he can get a high turnout from china town.

For anyone who hasn't heard of O'Connor, he sometimes writes for the Campaign for Liberty web site and Mises.org. He's very good on the issues. Even better than Kwiatkowski. But he's very cautious about how he phrases things because he's running as a Democrat. You have to read his old articles, rather than his campaign web site, to find where he really stands on things.
 
anaconda said:
Rand never ran for anything. He skipped right over to Senate and won in a land slide. Why would Virginia be so dramatically different? The incumbent senator in Utah couldn't even get his own party's nomination because he had voted with the establishment on one too many things.
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Rand ran for an open seat. He had better name recognition in his state, partly due to the defunct Kentucky Taxpayers Union and partly due to his father's recent run for President. All he had to do was distance himself a little from Ron Paul's more unpopular views and keep the ones Republicans liked.

95% of incumbents are re-elected. Obviously a few aren't. They usually have to do something incredibly stupid. Bennet was targeted for the bailout vote. Voting for Obamacare in a heavily Republican district would do it for Goodlatte. Except Goodlatte didn't vote for Obamacare, no matter how much the Kwiatkowski campaign wants to insinuate that he did. He voted against Obamacare originally, voted to repeal Obamacare, voted to repeal the individual mandate, and then voted to defund Obamacare. Yes, he voted for the PATRIOT Act, the wars, and supported SOPA. But those are only issues we care about, not mainstream Republicans.
 
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enoch150 said:
Rand ran for an open seat. He had better name recognition in his state, partly due to the defunct Kentucky Taxpayers Union and partly due to his father's recent run for President. All he had to do was distance himself a little from Ron Paul's more unpopular views and keep the ones Republicans liked.

95% of incumbents are re-elected. Obviously a few aren't. They usually have to do something incredibly stupid. Bennet was targeted for the bailout vote. Voting for Obamacare in a heavily Republican district would do it for Goodlatte. Except Goodlatte didn't vote for Obamacare, no matter how much the Kwiatkowski campaign wants to insinuate that he did. He voted against Obamacare originally, voted to repeal Obamacare, voted to repeal the individual mandate, and then voted to defund Obamacare. Yes, he voted for the PATRIOT Act, the wars, and supported SOPA. But those are only issues we care about, not mainstream Republicans.
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Thank you for the thorough and thoughtful analysis. One point however: significantly fewer than 95% of incumbents managed to keep their House seats in 2010.
 
anaconda said:
Thank you for the thorough and thoughtful analysis. One point however: significantly fewer than 95% of incumbents managed to keep their House seats in 2010.
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I believe it was 87% in 2010, but most of the defeats were in general elections in swing districts. Defeating an incumbent in the primary is close to impossible, and requires a lot of resources and odds in your favor.
 
MRoCkEd said:
I believe it was 87% in 2010, but most of the defeats were in general elections in swing districts. Defeating an incumbent in the primary is close to impossible, and requires a lot of resources and odds in your favor.
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Good point about the primary vs. general.
 
bump!

Karen K. definitely needs her own forum here!

edit: I first heard about Karen from this AVTM clip. I still use that clip as a great debate tool for the war hawks.

"I got to see how the agenda is set, and it had nothing to do with the security of the United States. The great infrastructure of the department of defense and the great infrastructure and budget of our intelligence departments were not used to find out what was really happened, they were not used to further American defenses. It was used as a field to pick tiny bits of information here and there, that could be fed up into the political chain and could be used by politicians and by the appointed leaders of the pentagon to justify a decision, really that they had already made. And that decision in 2002, was the decision to invade and occupy Iraq.

The intelligence infrastructure and all of the hard work of all of those good people that wear the uniform and the civilians – their work was used to further a very different agenda than what they thought they were working for.

The average person figures that the president tells the truth, the vice president tells the truth, the secretary of state tell the truth; and they don't. They don't. The founders understood that people would be flawed, that political leaders would not be the best of men … so they set forth the constitution. We don't follow the constitution in this country; had we done so in 2001 and 2002, the world would be a different place."​
 
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Kalebthefinn said:
I'm working on her campaign. Ask me anything.
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Has someone from her campaign tried contacting the Peter Schiff show? That would be great publicity for her, I would think.

If you think it's a good idea, I could make a post on a few forums and try to get others to contact the Schiff show as well.
 
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