{"id":11487,"date":"2018-07-17T07:00:34","date_gmt":"2018-07-17T11:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=11487"},"modified":"2019-05-29T04:04:02","modified_gmt":"2019-05-29T08:04:02","slug":"could-robin-ficker-win-a-three-way-race-for-executive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=11487","title":{"rendered":"Could Ficker Win a Three-Way Race for Executive?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n

There is much condemnation of Council Member Nancy Floreen among Democratic activists for leaving the party and launching an independent run for Executive.\u00a0 Some of the outrage is related to party loyalty.\u00a0 Some of it is related to support for the apparent Democratic primary winner, Marc Elrich.\u00a0 And some of it is related to Floreen\u2019s record in office and historic support by the business community.\u00a0 Those are all value judgments best left to the readers.\u00a0 But one concern can actually be evaluated with data \u2013 the notion that a Floreen candidacy could enable GOP candidate Robin Ficker to come up the middle and squeak out a victory.\u00a0 Could that actually happen?<\/p>\n

Ficker, who has a long and infamous history in the county<\/a>, has been running for office since the 1970s.\u00a0 He was actually elected to a District 15 House of Delegates seat in 1978, a decision reversed by the voters four years later.\u00a0 Since then, he has run for offices of all kinds<\/a> and placed numerous charter amendments on the ballot.\u00a0 Two of his charter amendments \u2013 a property tax limitation measure in 2008 and a term limits measure in 2016 \u2013 were passed by county voters.<\/p>\n

Robin Ficker\u2019s <\/em>official House of Delegates picture from 1978<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 Forty years later, could he be headed to elected office again?<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

First, let\u2019s look at Ficker\u2019s electoral history since the 1990s.\u00a0 He has run ten times and lost on every occasion.\u00a0 In every race, he has been a Republican except for 2006, when he ran as an independent for County Executive.\u00a0 (Twelve years later, that\u2019s what Nancy Floreen is doing.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Besides all the losing, the thing that stands out here is Ficker\u2019s unpopularity in the Republican Party.\u00a0 He has entered six contested GOP primaries since 1994 and lost five of them.\u00a0 The only time he had opposition and won was when he ran in the 2009 County Council District 4 special election and defeated two no-name Republicans who barely campaigned.\u00a0 The lesson here is that when Republicans have an alternative to Ficker who is not a Democrat, they tend to vote for someone else.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even Republicans are reluctant to buy what Ficker is selling.\u00a0 Photo credit: Getty Images, John W. McDonough.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"wedding<\/a><\/p>\n

When he did make it to general elections, Ficker earned vote percentages ranging from 34% to 41%.\u00a0 But most of those elections occurred in Upcounty districts where Republicans are a much larger percentage of the electorate than the county as a whole.<\/p>\n

Now let\u2019s look at the performances of GOP candidates for County Executive over the last five general elections.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the untold stories in MoCo elections is the recent decline in electoral performance by Democratic nominees in MoCo Executive general elections.\u00a0 From 1998 through 2006, the Republican nominee did not crack 30%.\u00a0 In the last two elections, the Republican got 34% of the vote.\u00a0 For the most part, these were protest votes as the Republican candidates had no money, did not campaign and were not expected by anyone to win.\u00a0 Another thing to note is that the only one of these elections that had an independent candidate was 2006, when Ficker ran against Ike Leggett and GOP nominee Chuck Floyd.\u00a0 Ficker got just 9% of the vote, another sign of his unpopularity with both Republicans and independents.<\/p>\n

Finally, let\u2019s consider turnout by party in MoCo mid-term general elections.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Over the years, Democratic turnout percentage has edged up gradually, independent turnout has increased and Republican turnout has collapsed.\u00a0 At some point, it\u2019s reasonable to expect that independent turnout might exceed the GOP.<\/p>\n

For Ficker to win, he would need to hold onto all the GOP votes, win more than 70% of independents and have Floreen and Elrich split everyone else exactly down the middle.\u00a0 That would result in Ficker getting 34% of the vote and Floreen and Elrich each getting 33%.\u00a0 That\u2019s extremely unlikely for two reasons.\u00a0 First, as detailed above, Ficker is weak among GOP voters and Republicans and independents would have a viable alternative in Floreen.\u00a0 Second, for this scenario to work, almost half of all Democrats would have to vote against their own party’s nominee to keep Elrich at 33%.\u00a0 It\u2019s easier to see a path to victory for Floreen, who could win by getting half the Republicans, all the independents and roughly 28% of the Democrats.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Just to be clear, we are skeptical that anyone can defeat a Democratic nominee in a MoCo countywide election.\u00a0 But whatever the ramifications of a possible Floreen independent run, we\u2019re pretty sure that one of them will not be a victory by Robin Ficker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. There is much condemnation of Council Member Nancy Floreen among Democratic activists for leaving the party and launching an independent run for Executive.\u00a0 Some of the outrage is related to party loyalty.\u00a0 Some of it is related to support for the apparent Democratic primary winner, Marc Elrich.\u00a0 And some of it is … Continue reading Could Ficker Win a Three-Way Race for Executive?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[151,492,84,44,286],"tags":[1545,1627,1508,1478,1596],"class_list":["post-11487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-county-executive","category-marc-elrich","category-nancy-floreen","category-robin-ficker","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-county-executive","tag-marc-elrich","tag-nancy-floreen","tag-robin-ficker"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-2Zh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11487"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12114,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11487\/revisions\/12114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}