Roll Call looks at how Arizona Congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick survived when so many other Democrats lost on Election Day:

Republican operatives called her race “cooked.” One national news organization put her chances at 12 percent. After all, Arizona 1st District voters already fired Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick once before in a toxic climate in 2010.

But as House Democrats fell across the country, Kirkpatrick didn’t just win re-election. She expanded her margin from 2012. She proved the naysayers wrong due to one, simple political maxim: To win, a candidate has to be better than his or her opponent. And she was.

Her rival, Arizona Speaker Andy Tobin was a a top recruit for national Republicans. The party went all in for him, spending millions against her on television.

“People know me,” she said in a phone interview last week. “They’re common sense people, and I think they saw through the partisan games.”

This article appears in Nov 13-19, 2014.

Getting hassled by The Man Mild-mannered reporter

4 replies on “How Ann Kirkpatrick Won Big on Election Day”

  1. Everyone should be proud of the honest, frank campaign Congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick conducted. A huge pile of money was spend tearing her down, luckily she had resources to answer.

    That is the point and a serious problem with the election process that we have now. What would have been had she not had finances to respond? Ann Kirkpatrick is District 1 through and through. A lessor candidate could not have even been heard.

    Forget what the rest of the nation is willing to put up with in massive political money. Arizona desperately needs a Constitutional provision to at the very least force full disclosure of every penny and dark dime spent in campaigns.

    Full campaign finance disclosure doesn’t guarantee better elected officials but it will give the citizens a look into the undercover money behind a candidate. The Arizona electorate should demand nothing less, show us the money.

  2. Hola, Sr. Hakeson.

    But I’m not sure I fully understand the points you made in your post.

    As for accounting?

    Well, as you wrote – “at the very least force full disclosure of every penny and dark dime spent in campaigns.”

    Which will never happen, as we both know.

  3. Magarv:

    That is not true. In California there is a law that requires disclosure (which is how we learned that the Koch Brothers machine was behind the defeat of two ballot measures in 2012, since a lawsuit in California forced disclosure of the source of the money spent on similar campaigns there by the same front groups.)

    It may be necessary however to put such a proposition on the ballot as a citizen initiative because you are correct that the legislature, being the beneficiaries of a lot of dark money, won’t put it on the ballot.

    I do (as a resident of Navajo County in CD-1) agree with Mr. Hakeson’s analysis. People here know Ann, and even a lot of Republicans crossed party lines to vote for her (which is why for example in our county she ran nearly 10 points better than the Democratic Gubernatorial candidate.)

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