Alex Sink's Panhandle Strategy

Joy-Ann Reid has an excellent breakdown of what went wrong with Alex Sink's campaign. I like to remark on one point Sink made in her interview with Politico.

In an interview with POLITICO, Sink said the (Obama) administration mishandled the resonse to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, doesn't appreciate the political damage done by health care reform and argued that her GOP opponent's strategy of trying her to the president did grave damage to her candidacy in the state's conservative Panhandle.

Sink's campaign strategy hinged on winning the Panhandle! Has Sink ever looked at maps of statewide races? The Panhandle is where Democratic campaigns go to die. I got no problems with Democratic candidates going into red areas to fight for votes. It is a good way to make Republican spend their money in areas they don't want to. That is different than Sink thinking she was going to carry red counties.

Inoljt at Redstate.com made a map of how North Florida areas voting in the 2008 election. The bigger the red dot, the more the area voting for John McCain.



Look at that map. There is a total of 3 blue dots. Barack Obama won Florida in 2008, but could not do well in the Panhandle. If Sink thought she could beat Rick Scott in the Panhandle then she is on some fantastic drugs. As a candidate, Alex Sink is no Barack Obama.

Sink wanted to win by defeating Scott in the most die hard Republican areas in Florida. Kendrick Meek's campaign manager Abe Dyk's strategy was to get the votes of 2006 losing candidate Jim Davis. It almost seems like these campaigns have strategy sessions on how to lose.