2007 Kentucky Governor’s Race – Awesome opportunity for us!!!

[TheEngineer]

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This was executed perfectly. I realized you thought PPA should have opened permanent offices here, with full-time employees, but that was never the plan. You may disagree, but that doesn't mean that PPA was ineffective.

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I have no idea where you get the idea that this was my plan in the least. To call it a distortion of any of the various plans I discussed with anyone would actually assume you had any desire to discuss the facts.

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They, like PPA, didn't spend more resources than necessary on this blowout.

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The real value of a real effort in KY would have been to develop some real political knowledge going into '08. The winner of the election was determined long before labor day and everyone knows that. There was never really a race.

But if there is a race in '08 in KY other than in KY-04 CD, what have we really gained? Yes I agree that for the effort expended the result is possibly +EV. But the training and knowledge potentially gained from the possible experience has been lost. It will have to be gained in the future when the race isn't a blow out. That is the loss IMO.

We in effect folded and saved our money for another hand. We can milk that "experience" for all its worth and should. But we shouldn't kid ourselves or congratulate ourselves on the awesome opportunity we capitalized on.

Political grassroots organizations are not run as a PR campaign. You have to test out the troops and get them bloodied a little before they even know how strong they really are.

I made some calls and spoke to a number of people in your own backyard who should have known the PPA existed. Yet not one of them had heard of you or the PPA without a great deal of prompting if at all.

No KY wasn't an ideal race to really prove the political muscle of the PPA. But we barely exercised it at all. How many people in KY can you confidently call and know they can do what they say with out wondering at all if they can really do it? How much could you raise from the people of KY because you can get them on the phone from your work in this race? If the gaming issue were to go on the primary ballot in KY how ready are you really to fight that battle? Yes I know the issue will never be on the ballot for the primary, but the fact remains that KY despite the victory was an "awesome opportunity" squandered as far as building a real grassroots organization matters. PR wise it only has limited value. Politically even that is somewhat questionable.

Again I do not say this to demean a single thing you did nor a minute of hard work you have done in this effort. You did what you could with what direction you were given and deserve congratulations for all you did and accomplished.

I in no way wish to tarnish the luster of your sucess. My comments are only those of a Monday morning armchair quarterback if you will. We perhaps a team member not allowed to play.... [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] Yes that is a joke. I fully understand the rationale for the decision to play the hand as it was played. I simply as someone with a little experience in the trenches disagree with the overall strategy.

The fact remains that the PPA as a grassroots organiztion is untested. No one knows what we can or can't do. We might have had a better idea had we played this hand, perhaps not the return required to justify playing it in terms of EV from the single hand, but it would have been IMO break even at worst. The true value of the "awesome opportuinity" was the potential experience and political knowledge gained for the future, not the ability to simply claim we were on the winning side.

At best we can claim the "moral majority" crowd were neturalized. But when you really dig into the race at best all you can say is they were not motivated by Ernie's crass attempt to motivate them.

The political players in KY know who did what and why in this election, so do the national parties. Any attempt to really build on this one race will likely be building on political sand. To claim this as a "great victory" or meaningful of much is really over reaching.

But this opportunity too has past. We'll agree or disagree on the next issue as it happens. I will be interesting to see the final election results and to see what might be able to be gained from working the numbers.

Again thank you for all you did in this effort.


D$D

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What you describe was well beyond the scope of what we had planned.

[DeadMoneyDad]

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What you describe was well beyond the scope of what we had planned.

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Thanks Captian Obvious.

I think I fully understand what was planned and what was done. We I thought were discussing the value of the strategy that was planned and "perfectly executed."

Beyond attempting to completely first mis-state my alternate plans, now you seem completely unwilling to discuss the ultimate merits of the potential outcomes.

I'll just chalk it up to another sin of omission or lost opportunity.

Sadly to say the history of the PPA is repleate with lost opportunities and the attitude to defend the bad/poor/timid decisions to the last ounce of strength and attempt to convince others they were much more sucessful than they really were.

This is the "preception" problem the board has faced from the begining. Get out to the poker rooms, the bar legaues, and amongst the political operatives. The perception you get from the forums is a good deal less than 1/2 the image problem the PPA faces.

But hey perhaps run a poll to see how many out of ten or fifteen responses agree with me and think your job is done.

I live in a town fully of political operators of all types. Other than the efforts of well paid lobbiests the PPA for the most part is considered amature hour, at least as compared to its stated goal of being a true grassroots organization.

Given the political enviorment, the motivating force of the UIGEA action, as well as enough actions against poker in almost all forms, as well as our true numbers we could be in a much better position today than we are. Many other such groups are much better off with less of the "perfect storm" of factors affecting poker.

But maybe the PPA does not feel the members of the poker community as a whole are capable of stepping up and getting the job done. But we may never know as there seems to be a complete lack of desire to even find out.

But if you keep putting make up on things and getting overly defensive about critism you are going to drive more people away not bring more in.


D$D

[TheEngineer]

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What you describe was well beyond the scope of what we had planned.

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Thanks Captian Obvious.

I think I fully understand what was planned and what was done. We I thought were discussing the value of the strategy that was planned and "perfectly executed."

Beyond attempting to completely first mis-state my alternate plans, now you seem completely unwilling to discuss the ultimate merits of the potential outcomes.

I'll just chalk it up to another sin of omission or lost opportunity.

Sadly to say the history of the PPA is repleate with lost opportunities and the attitude to defend the bad/poor/timid decisions to the last ounce of strength and attempt to convince others they were much more sucessful than they really were.

This is the "preception" problem the board has faced from the begining. Get out to the poker rooms, the bar legaues, and amongst the political operatives. The perception you get from the forums is a good deal less than 1/2 the image problem the PPA faces.

But hey perhaps run a poll to see how many out of ten or fifteen responses agree with me and think your job is done.

I live in a town fully of political operators of all types. Other than the efforts of well paid lobbiests the PPA for the most part is considered amature hour, at least as compared to its stated goal of being a true grassroots organization.

Given the political enviorment, the motivating force of the UIGEA action, as well as enough actions against poker in almost all forms, as well as our true numbers we could be in a much better position today than we are. Many other such groups are much better off with less of the "perfect storm" of factors affecting poker.

But maybe the PPA does not feel the members of the poker community as a whole are capable of stepping up and getting the job done. But we may never know as there seems to be a complete lack of desire to even find out.

But if you keep putting make up on things and getting overly defensive about critism you are going to drive more people away not bring more in.


D$D

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I guess we just had different visions for the optimal outcome.

Cheers.

[DeadMoneyDad]

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I guess we just had different visions for the optimal outcome.

Cheers.

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Fair enough.

D$D