As Americans in Virginia and New Jersey head to the polls to vote for a governor Tuesday, one has to wonder what will make them mark their ballots for their preferred candidates. One thing is certain: a politician doesn't need to run on substance these days; soundbites will get the job done. If politicians want to curry favor with their base, they should take a leaf from the playbook of Representative Joe Wilson, who interrupted President Obama during a 2009 speech to Congress, shouting, "You lie!"
Decorum? No. Worldwide attention? Yes.
In New Jersey, a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by 700,000 among registered voters, incumbent Governor Chris Christie, a Republican who leads in the polls by a wide margin, spent the last weekend of the campaign touring the state encountering crowds that "treated him more like a celebrity than a politician", according to the New York Times. What about his opponent? The Democratic challenger is Senator Barbara Buono; yet it's almost as if she doesn't exist. She needs some soundbites that could be turned into Twitter hashtags.
Are voters picking winners based on outsize personalities, rather than the substantial issues of the day, such as unemployment? Governor Christie is, both literally and figuratively, an outsized candidate who takes positions that would appear to be to the right of New Jersey's voters. Yet, where does his public personality in the media leave his opponent? In the dust, apparently.
The middle class in New Jersey has taken a hammering economically, but Christie is hailed as a strong possible presidential candidate for 2016.
We shouldn't be surprised at larger-than-life, media-savvy candidates being elected to office, as we have only to look at the rise of Corey Booker, the new Democratic Senator for New Jersey and former mayor of Newark. Again, from the New York Times:
With a Twitter following six times as large as the city he has led, Mr Booker was known outside Newark largely for his appearances on late-night television and his heroics: rescuing a neighbor from a burning building, shoveling out snowbound cars, living on a food stamp diet.
There was something about a Twitter relationship with a vegan stripper from my hometown of Portland, Oregon, but I'll let that slide. Although Booker oversaw budget cuts that reduced the size of the Newark police force, which his critics pointed to as a factor in a two-week spree of murders this summer, even Tea Party favorites Rand Paul and Sarah Palin couldn't help his Republican opponent, Steve Lonegan (remember him?), cast a shadow on Booker's media spotlight.
In Virginia, Democrat Terry McAuliffe is in a tough race for the state's governorship. McAuliffe is a rough-and-tumble political combatant revered for his fundraising abilities. In fact, he is known in Democratic circles as a "super-funder". He raised a $34.4m campaign war chest; his Republican opponent, Ken Cuccinelli, raised $19.7m.
McAuliffe is pals with Bill and Hillary Clinton, and President Obama took to the stump on Sunday to support him. How many watts of star-power does this man need? What will he bring to the state if he gets elected – sleepovers in the governor's mansion?
The campaign has been rife with negative advertising, mostly from the Democratic side. Cuccinelli is running against Obamacare, while relying on his Tea Party base and the NRA. That's about it on the substance of issues at hand. While McAuliffe has found support from Republican business leaders who expect him to improve the state's business climate, we haven't heard a lot about the Virginia company he ran, GreenTech.
Politicking is as old as the hills. What's new is the plethora of media channels: Facebook, Twitter, blogs, cable "news" channels and an odd preponderance of journalists who don't ask tough questions of candidates. In an era of soundbites and rapid-fire tweeting, society stands to lose if we are not electing officials to office based on their true, substantive plans for how they will govern and represent the electorate that votes them in.
In the meantime, we can look to Toronto's scandal-struck mayor, Rob Ford, to see what substantive plans he brought to that city, and we can discuss whether Michelle Obama should be wearing stiletto heels or flats. It's enough to make one nostalgic for the hanging chad.
