Joe Mondello Can't Count

Joe Mondello, Chair of the New York state GOP and of the Nassau County GOP, has a lot riding on the Feb 6 special election in the Seventh Senate District. It's the first election under his watch as chair of the state GOP, it's happening in his backyard, and it's a test of how the state GOP will respond to their drubbing in the 2006 Governor's race.

So maybe that's why Joe chose to be a little, shall we say, extravagant with the truth. From a New York Times article on the race:

The campaign is off to a quick start. "We had 500 people going door to door last weekend, and we hope to have 700 this weekend," Mr. Mondello said. Democrats say they have an equally ambitious field operation. Their county chairman, Jay S. Jacobs, said that with an expected 10 to 15 percent voter turnout, "the ground game is the decider."

Yeah right.

Now it is right that the ground game is the decider. And the Working Families Party is running an ambitious field operation, that's right too.

But there's no way the state Republicans have 100 people going door to door, much less 500 or 700. The thing about canvassing is, if you're out there canvassing for hours and the other side is out there canvassing for hours then each side's canvassers are going to run into each other. But I asked our 45 canvassers, who are knocking on thousands of doors every night, if they've seen a GOP door knocker.

The word from the Working Families Party canvass is that yesterday is the first day O'Connell had people on the doors, and it was only a handful of people.

And it's not like we stick to the areas where turnout has historically been in our favor. Our targeting is pretty advanced, so we can pick out the voters likely to go our way even in areas that don't look promising overall. So we'd be running into any GOP door knockers that are out there. A couple of nights ago, we were in Maureen O'Connell's home turf, near her house, and we didn't see any GOP door knockers. Not a one.

So I'm asking you. Campaign volunteers were deep in Republican turf in Mineola on Saturday, with not a single Republican walker spotted. If you were out there knocking on doors for Craig, did you see any of Joe Mondello's imaginary friends?

16 days until Election Day!

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