Based on what people have said here, I think Carrick sounds like a great candidate who would make a wonderful representative. However, my impression from loosely following primaries from time to time is that local reputation matters a lot. Self funders tend not to do well because they tend not to have real local support. Does Carrick have a strong base of support or message to compete against the likes of a popular progressive state rep like Salinas (I don’t believe we have fundraising numbers from her yet)? If anyone knows of a race where a similar candidate won in similar circumstances, I’d love to hear about it.
The first similar race that comes to mind for me is when Cenk Uygur ran in California in 2020. Cenk moved to the district to run for an open seat and had large financial support from his fanbase built running a progressive independent media outlet known as The Young Turks. But he only got around 6% of the vote with $1.7 million spent. Granted, there are a couple of differences here: California has Top Two/jungle primaries which means all candidates are on the same primary ballot; it was a special election which tends to have lower turnout; Cenk tends to be pretty abrasive; he never lived in the district before; the election was in a swing district; and Cenk had controversial misogynistic past blog posts from years ago when he identified as a conservative Republican and was hit hard in the media over it. He was running against a woman state rep with local party support who ultimately won the primary (although she ultimately lost the general election by a few hundred votes). I wasn’t able to find numbers for what she spent in the special election primary but she got over $5 million in all of 2020 so maybe less than half of that?
I agree that Carrick loses to Salinas on some dimensions. He also beats her on some dimensions, like story, ads and social media. I think both have reasonably good chances.
Based on what people have said here, I think Carrick sounds like a great candidate who would make a wonderful representative. However, my impression from loosely following primaries from time to time is that local reputation matters a lot. Self funders tend not to do well because they tend not to have real local support. Does Carrick have a strong base of support or message to compete against the likes of a popular progressive state rep like Salinas (I don’t believe we have fundraising numbers from her yet)? If anyone knows of a race where a similar candidate won in similar circumstances, I’d love to hear about it.
The first similar race that comes to mind for me is when Cenk Uygur ran in California in 2020. Cenk moved to the district to run for an open seat and had large financial support from his fanbase built running a progressive independent media outlet known as The Young Turks. But he only got around 6% of the vote with $1.7 million spent. Granted, there are a couple of differences here: California has Top Two/jungle primaries which means all candidates are on the same primary ballot; it was a special election which tends to have lower turnout; Cenk tends to be pretty abrasive; he never lived in the district before; the election was in a swing district; and Cenk had controversial misogynistic past blog posts from years ago when he identified as a conservative Republican and was hit hard in the media over it. He was running against a woman state rep with local party support who ultimately won the primary (although she ultimately lost the general election by a few hundred votes). I wasn’t able to find numbers for what she spent in the special election primary but she got over $5 million in all of 2020 so maybe less than half of that?
I agree that Carrick loses to Salinas on some dimensions. He also beats her on some dimensions, like story, ads and social media. I think both have reasonably good chances.