Not Time to Play Taps for Topinka

I'm a bit astonished as I read the Blogs and newspaper articles giving GOP Gubernatorial Nominee Judy Topinka up as dead in the water. That is not how I have read events of the past two months at all. In fact, I believe this race is hers to lose.

About two months ago, Dem. Gov. Rod Blagojevich went on a withering offensive, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars each week on TV ads attacking Topinka. It was unusual to jump into television ads that early and that far out from election day, but Blagojevich's numbers were so bad, he had to try to set the tone of the race early. What was not at all unusual to anyone who has ever been intimately involved in a big race is that you play some of your time on defense and some of your time on offense. Just because your opponent is racking up yards when he is on offense does not mean you are losing.

What was really striking about that period was that Blagojevich could not coax his own numbers above 50%. What was also striking about it was that with several million dollars of effort, he only managed to push Topinka into the mid 30s, instead of annihilating her. For six weeks of sustained effort and millions of dollars spent, Blagojevich barely got the equivalent of a field goal - and that's not a sign of strength.

In a one-on-one race, I am not a believer in early television. It is hugely expensive and produces results that are deceptive because they are transient and shallow. In a primary in Illinois, people don't start paying serious attention until after New Year. In a general election they don't start paying serious attention until after Labor Day. Horse-race numbers at that point start to mean something.

In a race where the incumbent has a huge war chest that dwarfs the challenger, one of the best tactics for the challenger is to horde their own money until after Labor Day while making every effort to goad the incumbent into spending as much of his own money before then as possible. Hmmm...that's what Topinka has done thus far. Maybe it was an accident - or maybe it is sound strategy.

Certainly, she will have to have a good offensive plan once Labor Day has come and gone. But to reveal much of it before then only gives her well-funded opponent ample time to craft a response. In the meantime, she has work to do in shoring up the Republican base, which is socially conservative. I have read several interviews in which she makes a point of her opposition to partial birth abortion and her support for parental notification. It seems to me as if she is working at it - and I am a social conservative.

If Topinka shores up the base and has a good, solid game plan after Labor Day, she wins this race going away, even if Blagojevich raises four times as much money as he already has. You don't need all the money in the world; just enough to clear the threshold that gets your message across. In a gubernatorial general election in this race, the first five million you raise is critical. If, after that, you raise another 50 million, it is not even half as meaningful as that first five - because that's what gets you past the threshold.

Given those parameters, it doesn't matter how much more money Blagojevich raises now. His problem is that, after all is said and done, he's still Rod Blagojevich.