Republicans will look back at Mark Shelton’s campaign as a squandered opportunity. Like a specter, the incompetence arrived early and hovered.
Right off the bat, the Shelton campaign allowed the Wendy Davis campaign to get a hold of the script for their first anti-Davis TV ad. The Davis campaign rebutted the ad before anyone saw it. More importantly, they established a sense of being in command.
And, in a year with precious little oxygen for state races on account of an engrossing Presidential race, the Shelton campaign chose a complicated conspiracy narrative against Davis, instead of wielding the national energy by driving home Wendy Davis’s biggest, simplest weakness – that she is an Obama Democrat.
Finally, incompetency book-ended the campaign, when the Shelton campaign lodged a complaint with the Texas Ethics Commission that was tossed out for being wrongly filed. It was a fitting end to a dismal campaign.
Bryan Eppstein, the most expensive consultant in Texas, ran this shambles of a campaign, as he did the campaign of the Republican incumbent who originally lost the seat to Wendy Davis.
This Senate District (SD 10) includes all, or portions of, 5 Republican House Districts and 2 Democrat House Districts. Mitt Romney carried SD 10.
Eppstein is struggling to retain his slick self-presentation in the face of poor results, paid for at a premium.