Christian Schoenewald has no name recognition. But although he’s lived here only two years and almost no one knows who he is, he’s challenging Dennis Rooker, chairman of the Board of Supervisors, for the Jack Jouett seat.
“I’m a newcomer,” concedes Schoenewald. “There are college students who’ve been here longer than I have.”
But obviously he doesn’t consider his newcomer’s status as necessarily a bad thing. “Time in a place is not the best measure of someone’s effectiveness in a place,” says the communications consultant who won the Republican nomination in June.
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I wouldn’t dismiss him so readily because of this; he makes a good point – After seven years in the Washington area, “I’ve seen explosive growth rates,” he explains. “I’ve seen governments make mistakes. With an outsider, you get an outsider’s perspective.” And Schoenewald thinks he’s the man to say, “Stop, you don’t want to go down this road.”
Certainly, it is doubtful that he has a snowball’s chance of unseating Dennis Rooker, but our region has a tendency for not being able to see the forest for the trees regarding growth issues. A change of perspective may be a good thing.
Oh, I’m right there with him on growth. :) But if he thinks he’s going to win by saying things like “there are college students who’ve been here longer than I have,” he’ll have a rude awakening. By and large, we like our candidates either local or local enough that we can claim ignorance on the topic — certainly moreso in Albemarle than in Charlottesville.
I’d suggest not getting too confident. Schoenewald may not stand much of a chance, but often enough, underestimating a candidate can play a big part in an election. Just my two cents.
Schoenewald is trying to unseat a popular incumbent in a district where a) Democrats rule b) locals rule and c) everybody’s happy with the incumbent.
Last election, we saw Eric Strucko lose. He’d run a textbook-perfect campaign for years prior to the election. A couple of months before the election, David Wyant tossed his hat into the ring. He took virtually no positions, and had a campaign built on nothing. Wyant won. Why? He’s the local guy. I had lifelong Democrats tell me things like “sure, I vote for Democrats, but we’re talking about Dave Wyant here — I used to date his brother.”
In Albemarle, even if all other things are unequal, locals win.
Not that I can see why my take matters. I’m not in the district and I have nothing to do with either campaign. :)
The guy worked for the Bush administration. If Schoenewald starts to get any traction, all Rooker needs to do is start loudly pointing out that fact.
If I was going to go hard negative against him, my message would be something along the lines of: ‘Schoenwald is a carpet-bagging shill for the people who ran America into the ground and threw away the lives of 2,000 American troops. Now he wants to bring Washington-style neo-conservatism to Albemarle county.’
Of course, part of the bait there is that is hasn’t been quite 2,000 casualties yet. And the hope would be that his campaign gets bogged down in debating the numbers rather than deflecting the thrust of the thing. But first I’d do nothing at all for a little while and see if that’s the way to go, since so often with first-time challengers it is really true that if you ignore them they will go away. That is true far, far more often than underestimation comes into play. Most new candidates for anything suck.
If voters could check a box that said ‘both these guys suck,’ then nearly every race for an open seat would result in that office remaining empty on the basis of new candidates having generally no idea what they are doing. After 50 years or so, government would dissolve by attrition and anarchy would result. So thank God for crappy candidates and the fact that one of them mathematically must win.
Uh oh. “Communications Consultant” and “recently recived Republican Nomination”
I’ve never heard anything about this guy before, and those are huge red flags that he’s a movement con. pod person who spent the last five years finding artful ways to badmouth the poor, spread bigotry, and exhalt mindless militarism (to quote Juan Cole).
Communications consultant = P.R. flak = hit him with the truth, in a kind, gentle, and sardonic way that makes him look like the twisted spinmeister (i’m still assuming) he is.