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The congressional campaign of Major (ret.) Michael D. Pierce (R, Naperville) recently launched its campaign website, including his initial issues with his positions for his platform.
The issues page for his website can be viewed here.
It took him over half of an entire quarter since announcing he was running to launch a website.
That’s time wasted.
Time not getting his message out.
Time not telling people about events (which he probably didn’t have, but we wouldn’t know anyway).
Time not taking donations. Time not having volunteers contact him.
Time not communicating with voters.
If you run for office, especially the United States House of Representatives, you better be ready to hit the ground running, especially when you’re running against well funded candidates like Lauf in the primary or Foster in the general election.
You should have it ready to go, and if it’s not ready to go it should be up QUICKLY (a month at most but I’d say 2 weeks). This should have been prepped before he announced. Ideally, you would launch it around the same time you make the announcement.
I don’t consider 7 weeks to be quick.
Right before Christmas when people aren’t paying attention too.
Where is his social media?
This guy is ex-military.
He should be organized, he should be strategic.
I don’t see that.
I see an apathetic and unprepared guy who doesn’t have a clue what he is doing.
This embarrassing roll-out and him doing next to nothing is disqualifying.
It shows a lack of drive. Lauf raised a million dollars this year.
She raised more money than Bill Foster BY FAR, and he is an incumbent Democratic congressman!
(She just spent more and Foster has a huge COH advantage.)
Seppelfrck isn’t a serious candidate either.
Where is this terrific candidate who is going to run against Lauf and supposedly save GOP voters???
Are they a celebrity?
Can they raise 6 figures each month?
If not, Lauf is going to beat them.
Correcting, first, I disagree concerning you assessment of any of the new candidates running for Congress in the “competitive” districts.
Let me walk that back,
Seppelfrick isn’t a serious candidate.
As for Pierce just launching a website, have you been on Lauf’s campaign website?
There’s nothing of substance.
Lauf was openly raising money for a campaign against Adam Kinzinger through October and still is raising money against Kinzinger on her WinRed site, and as you pointed out, she’ll have a million raised by year-end.
Lauf will be lucky to have at least $300K in the bank above the $216K she reported cash-on-hand at the end of the 3rd quarter given her burn rate.
Now, if Lauf had $1 million cash-on-hand, debt-free on her FEC year-end filing, then she’ll be on cruise control for the nomination, but she doesn’t, and what I’m hearing from the electorate is they want someone other than Lauf to take on Foster in November.
If Lauf was rolling out party leaders’ and elected officials’ endorsements like Congressman Darin LaHood did recently, Correcting you may be right, Lauf is really way ahead.
Remember, we didn’t know the boundaries of the new districts until October 28, and they were approved on the 29th, and signed into law last month.
The “candidate X”s I’ve been hearing about will not announce until after the 1st of the year, and one won’t get a gauge how their fundraising is doing until mid April.
That is by design, and word out of DC from reliable sources say one of the candidate X will have financial backing from national Republicans.
Yes, that could be smoke, but I trust my sources, even if they’re eventually proven wrong.
Let’s remember, the primary is June 28, not March 15 in 2022, so it is not too late to announce, and I expect at least 2 to 3 people will announce in IL-11 alone after the first of the year before petition circulation time.
Plus, Lauf will not be the only woman on a primary ballot with a much of men.
As for Bill Foster’s fundraising, remember, he’s just been switched from a safe/strong Democratic district to a competitive new district.
We’ll see if his fundraising kicked into a higher gear in November and December once the new boundaries were known at the end of October.
Actually Correcting, he’s a pretty good example of the current disorganized and simpleton military.
“As for Pierce just launching a website, have you been on Lauf’s campaign website? There’s nothing of substance.”
Fair point and something I pointed out about her last time around.
I’m not arguing Lauf is a policy wonk — only that she is a formidable GOP candidate in the primary with her media connections, money, and some name recognition since she ran before.
“Lauf will be lucky to have at least $300K in the bank”
That’s a 300k head start on these other candidates though.
Endorsements?
Well, I am somewhat of an oddball, John, but personally the “endorsements” from “party leaders and elected officials” make me less likely to support a candidate.
How many endorsements did Trump get in the 2016 primary from those people?
“Remember, we didn’t know the boundaries of the new districts until October 28, and they were approved on the 29th, and signed into law last month.”
OK, yeah, that’s a good point.
There’s not much of a rebuttal — other than if the GOP really doesn’t want Lauf to be their gal, they should have people lined up ready to take her on.
Now we have known about the district boundaries for a while but still don’t have a serious candidate going against Lauf.
If someone is going to make an announcement why are they waiting?
Why don’t they want to hit the ground running getting volunteers and raising money?
How does it help them to delay while Lauf continues to soak up money?
The primary is a long way off but this is a month or two of not raising money.
I don’t see how that helps them especially when they have to play catch-up with Lauf.
It’s wasted potential.
“candidate X will have financial backing from national Republicans”
Don’t you think this looks sleazy?
Maybe you are more “pragmatic” than I am, but this looks sleazy and suspect many voters will see it that way: D.C. rushing in to save the Republican voters in the district.
IMO that’s what Lauf looked like in 2020, like she was anointed by people in D.C., and it was one reason (of many) that I didn’t care for her.
Now D.C. wants someone who is NOT Lauf.
I think this will make people like her even more.
The optics of D.C. intervening against a candidate is not good.
And let’s not forget that 900,000 dollars was spent specifically against Jim Oberweis and he still won the primary despite protestations from D.C.
So D.C. spending money against people is sometimes a dud and could even backfire.
“Plus, Lauf will not be the only woman on a primary ballot with a much of men.”
She is so far in that contest, unless you’re saying someone being eyed by D.C. to run against her is a woman.
“As for Bill Foster’s fundraising, remember, he’s just been switched from a safe/strong Democratic district to a competitive new district. We’ll see if his fundraising kicked into a higher gear in November and December once the new boundaries were known at the end of October.”
Yeah, but he’s still B O R I N G.
Plenty of people in safe districts raise a lot of money — look at the squad.
That’s one of the challenges any Republican has running against Foster (the boring part).
He’s not out there beating his chest like AOC. Quigley, Schneider, and Foster are like the French Vanilla, Vanilla, and Vanilla Bean ice cream flavors of Illinois Dem congressional delegation.
They’re there.
They’re reliable.
They don’t turn heads.
They suffice.
They are kind of boring.
It’s kind of hard to make a boring dude look like a villain and Lauf’s entire image is built on rage/opposition (in my opinion).
She billed herself as the anti-AOC but Underwood was not AOC and Foster is certainly not AOC.
That means whether she likes it or not, Lauf IS going to have to get into policy even if for no other reason than to help frame Foster as scary communist anti-America man.
Honestly, the whole thing seems pointless to me, John: beltway GOPers flushing hundreds of thousands or millions in the toilet in a primary to hopefully defeat Lauf (which they may not even succeed at) so they can run against Bill Foster and lose.
It seems like a bad allocation of resources, but with Republicans that’s not that surprising… You probably disagree with that assessment as well.
Lauf eats a lot of lettuce.