November 10, 2008 - 14:33
News: Arizona

Former Nelson campaign manager says low turnout among key groups cost them

Low turnout among youth and Latino voters was largely to blame for Tim Nelson's defeat at the hands of incumbent and now re-elected Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, said Joshua Kilroy, who managed Nelson's campaign.

"We were counting on youth voters and especially Latino voters, and they just didn't show up," Kilroy told PolitickerAZ.com

Kilroy said those two groups, which saw an uptick in turnout nationwide Nov. 4 over previous years, didn't come out in significantly larger numbers than in past elections.

Also working against the Democrat's campaign was the McCain effect, Kilroy said. Despite poll numbers that showed Sen. John McCain (R-Phoenix) narrowly leading now-president-elect Barack Obama in Arizona prior to Election Day, the home state senator defeated his Democratic rival by nine points in Arizona. 

Kilroy said there were "absolutely" McCain coattails that helped Republican candidates such as Andrew Thomas down ballot.

 

Evan Brown is a PolitickerAZ.com Reporter and can be reached via email at noreply@politicker.com.

Comments

Post new comment

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <p> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <br>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
1 + 0 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.