No Recount For McKillip

I didn’t dismiss McKillip’s conversion story and sincerity out of hand. But three things, more than anything else, convinced me that I could not vote for him under any circumstances:

1) If you’ve been elected as a member of a particular party and with a particular platform, that defines the general boundaries of your mandate from the voters. If you repudiate both in the middle of your term–even if that repudiation takes you much closer to my own views, as it did here–the only honorable course is to resign and seek re-election under your new colors. Otherwise, you’re disrespecting the intent of the voters: who cares what they thought your principles were and what you were proposing to do; the only important thing is that you, the most important person in the universe, not have to give up your office.

2) In 2006, McKillip (D) ran against Quick (R) for the same seat. Neither were particularly unconventional representatives of their respective parties. In 2012, McKillip (R) faced Quick (R) in a rematch. Again, neither were particularly unconventional representatives of their party (now singular).

I simply can’t fathom how much chutzpah, or how little self-awareness, or how much contempt for the electorate–or some mixture of all three–it required for McKillip to make the cornerstone of his campaign the claim that he was a trusty true-blue conservative Republican and his opponent wasn’t. So she’s voted in Democratic primaries before, and given money to Democrats. So have I…but in general elections, I’ve given more to and cast more votes for Libertarians than for Democrats. (Bet McKillip can’t say that.)

And really, the stupidity of trying to make a Republican primary for the state House into a referendum on Obama–whether or not you backed him in 2008, though of course that makes it much, much worse–is so immense that it has its own gravitational field.

3) The sheer volume of shrill mailings and irritating robocalls and nails-on-blackboard “lady fibber” radio ads had me primed, by Primary Day, to vote for Kim Jong-un if necessary, if that’s what it would take to make McKillip go away. More is not always more, folks…especially when every single scrap of it insults the intelligence of even your average low-information voter. Did his campaign team have so little regard for his constituents that they thought bludgeoning them into submission was the best strategy? Is McKillip such a megalomaniacal narcissist that spending-happy consultants were able to persuade him that his constituents would be disappointed if they didn’t hear from him three times a day?

Reflect on how horrible your campaign was, Mr. McKillip, and on what unflattering inferences regarding your character that your constituents might have reasonably drawn from it. Learn from it. Temper your worst qualities, and augment your best. Seek to understand the difference between honest hard-working ambition and a vain lust for advancement at all costs.

Then come back and try again. I sincerely hope you’ll be a candidate I can support next time around.

(But please don’t call my house more than once a fortnight. Otherwise, I’ll be forced to send a sawbuck to the Kim Jong-un For Georgia House campaign.)