ROMNEY'S ELECTION NIGHT SURPRISE

Notes of Concern…

                               …Jackson Blair

ROMNEY'S ELECTION NIGHT SURPRISE

It will come to no surprise to my readers that I supported Governor Romney in the recent presidential election. I have waited for the dust to settle to offer my own story of what transpired on Election Day.

I was invited to spend all of the Election Day at the Romney War Room/ Command Center, which was located at the TD North Garden in Boston, MA.  I eagerly accepted this invitation, anticipating an exciting exposure to the inner workings of a presidential campaign on the final day.

It was necessary for me to leave my home at 3AM on Election Day and drive to Boston in order to be vetted, admitted and instructed on how the day would proceed.  I had previously had three conversations over three weeks about the vaunted Romney campaign computer program named ORCA.

It was to be a revolutionary use of 40,000 volunteers at most polling stations across the country, armed with their own laptops and handhelds and phones, relaying the names of every voter who arrived at a polling place and permitting a computer in Boston to then target calls to voters who had not yet shown up at the polling place, to provide Romney statisticians with good information on which groups of people were voting, and which were not, and to allow reasonable predictions on the course of the race, predictions that would allow course corrections throughout the day.

As a result of this technology, robo-calls could go out to the appropriate groups in each geographical area in order to strengthen the Romney turnout.

Throughout the morning the mood was quite upbeat.

Believe me, the Romney leadership thought they would win the election.

As an aside, I would add that I think the Obama Campaign leadership thought they, the Obama campaign, would lose the election.

How could the information have been so wrong?

We make a lot of assumptions about the high level of advice; management and planning that go into these campaigns. At the end of the day, the old adage “bad information in= bad information out” is always right.

Around noon on Election Day someone made the announcement to those of us at the Command Center that the “wise men,” based on the information they were receiving from the field, predicted Governor Romney would win 320 electoral votes. 

Cheers went up.

Toasts were made.

Enthusiasm was everywhere.

I imagine the Governor’s closest colleagues and friends were already addressing him as “Mr. President.”

Think back eight years.

All the pundits thought George Bush could not possibly win a second term. Everyone, and I mean everyone in the Bush White house, with the exception of Karl Rove evidently, read the early exit polls and started to clean out their desks.

Senator John Kerry’s people, if you are to believe the books and magazine articles, were that day referring to him as “Mr. President.”

What we have learned from these two recent examples is that just as it is not nice to fool “Mother Nature,” it is not nice to try to fool the “People.”

All the scientific polling, exit polls, computer technology, and thousands of workers in the field did not get either of these elections right.

The amazing ORCA system crashed at least two times by my count during the day. All sorts of things that were supposed to happen with the electronic data ended up being abandoned.

Governor Romney admits he did not prepare a concession speech. Why would he? Until late in the day he expected to be President.

President Obama shed tears when he spoke to his campaign staff in Chicago. Of course he did because at one time he thought he might be a one-term president.

When I received my invitation, I was advised to plan on staying until 1 or 2am the next day. After all, polls would be closing quite late on the west coast, and we might have to send planeloads of attorneys, all of who were packed and ready to go if needed, to fight close calls in key states.

By 9PM on election night, the mood at the Command Center had certainly changed. People with long faces were everywhere. All the folks who had been running around, delivering notes, and looking forward to inaugural parties were now sitting around stunned.

People out west were still voting.

It didn’t matter.

Key Romney operatives headed to the Westin Hotel bar to try to figure out what had happened. Most of them would simply, in a matter of weeks, move on to the early campaign  planning stage of prospective 2016 candidates.

I gathered my things at 9PM and quietly left the Garden. I went to a small quiet hotel bar in close proximity to the Boston Garden, took a seat at the bar, and ordered a martini. There was only one other man at the bar, and only one table in the bar occupied. None of these folks were talking about the election, and neither was the bartender. I knew immediately I was in the right place. I spent a couple of hours there and then retired to my hotel room and spent the night.

The next morning I got my car and returned home.

This is the way we Americans do it.

We fight like mad, go to the polls, count the votes, and then move on with life.

More importantly, the two candidates shake hands (in this case have lunch in the small dining room at The White House.) Then the winning candidate mounts a platform, puts his hand on a Bible, takes an oath, and we all move on.

No riots in the street.

No bloody coups by the military.

Democracy is great!

What did I learn from my election night experience?

·      The best laid plans……well, you know.

C. Jackson Blair
978 616 3330