When IEs Misfire

There is a nice mail piece that arrived in mailboxes this weekend throughout southwestern San Diego promoting Dr. Shirley Weber. She is a candidate for the 79^th Assembly District and the well-designed letter-sized mailer is a good introduction to her.

Which would be great if the recipients actually lived in the 79^th AD.

The mailer, paid for by the AFSCME CA People Independent Expenditure Committee, seems to have been sent to residents of the CURRENT 79^th AD and not the NEW 79^th AD.

Democratic voters living in the current 79^th AD, represented by Ben Hueso, may be confused as to when Huseo drew a challenger and why Dr. Weber won’t be on their ballot when they vote for him in the NEW 80^th.

What is even more important is that the AFSCME CA People Independent Expenditure Committee choked on the weekend before absentee ballots are mailed. By sending a mass mailer to the wrong universe, which has very little overlap with what should have been the target universe, they wasted resources and threw away an opportunity to lock down VBM voters.

In a multi-candidate election like the 79^th, any opportunity to break away from the pack matters. The other campaigns in the 79^th should be counting their lucky stars that this attempt failed, allowing them to fight on a leveler field than those that the IEs would permit.

The Weber campaign had nothing to do with this but the money lost in this misfire could have been better spent by the campaign itself.

I can understand how this happened (multiple data bases, the mail house, the vendor, etc.) but it doesn’t excuse the fact that someone at some level didn't review everything required for the mailing. All campaigns take note: DETAILS MATTER.