Cards
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2RlFfFnhUI&ab_channel=ThingsICantFindOtherwise
1986 Senate elections were sickening, so many close loses.
I’m ready to confess.
I processed the data and lists for Shelby’s ‘86 campaign.
Way too many losses. I believe we only picked up the one seat (open, of course) in MO with Kit Bond. A seat Gene McNary should’ve won in 1980 against Tom Eagleton.
Other “failed to capture” seats were CA (Ed Zschau against a past-his-prime Alan Cranston) by 1.5%, CO (Gary Hart’s open), which was also lost by the same amount, and LA (Russell Long’s open seat which Henson Moore should’ve won against John Breaux).
Losing AL (Denton), FL (Paula Hawkins), GA (Mack Mattingly), NC (Jim Broyhill), ND (Mark Andrews), SD (Abdnor) and WA (Gorton) was really a stroke of bad luck. Add to that, losing the open seat of Paul Laxalt in NV (which he should not have retired from) to Dingy Harry, was rotten. We also lost the MD open seat of Mathias, but he was already so far on the left that had he run again, he’d probably have switched parties.
Probably the most galling wasn’t a seat we lost, but held. Had Goldwater done the right thing and retired in 1980, we might’ve had someone like Eldon Rudd succeed him. Instead, we ended up with the treasonous warmongering Derp State scum McQueeg inheriting the seat in ‘86. How much better off we’d have been had he never darkened the doorstep of Congress.