2008 Primary Wrap Up

Yesterday was the GOP runoff here in South Carolina and we wrapped up an extremely successful cycle. Although State Senate candidate Scott Talley narrowly lost by 198 votes, State House candidate Tom Young saw an amazing victory. Tom was attacked for weeks by third party groups and his opponent was even endorsed by Governor Sanford. We send our congratulations to Tom and his wonderful team of supporters.

We also want to send our congratulations to David Herndon who joins Senator Luke Rankin and Representative Thad Viers as our winning UTPL web clients.

2008 was a good year for us. Our wins include:

Senator Greg Ryberg

Senator Larry Martin

Representative Keith Kelly

Representative BR Skelton

Derham Cole for House

Mike Forrester for House

Tom Young for House

George Hearn for House

Mike Sottile for House

Strom Thurmond, Jr. for Solicitor (note: the most difficult)

Our losses were Blair Jennings and Scott Talley.

Not too shabby.

New Videos from Senator DeMint

Senator DeMint has launched these two new videos on his website at www.jimdemint.com.

Congratulations George Hearn

As we told you the other day, George Hearn nearly squeaked it out without a runoff. We are proud to announce that today George’s three primary opponents have dropped out of the race and we now face no runoff or general election opposition. George Hearn will be the next State Representative from House District 105.

George is an incredibly hard worker and he will make one heck of a State Representative. We are extremely proud to have worked with him over the last few months and we can’t wait to see what great things he does for our state.

- Wes

A Good Night

Last night was a good night for our team. First Tuesday Strategies, the consulting side of our shop, won every legislative race and went into three runoffs in first place. We helped incumbent Representatives B.R. Skelton and Keith Kelly survive well-funded challenges. We also ran Senator Larry Martin and Greg Ryberg’s landslide victories.

We are very excited to have helped elect three new House members - Mike Forrester, Mike Sottile, and Derham Cole. All will be great assets to our state. We nearly got George Hearn elected outright in a four way primary, but we missed it by just a few votes. He will be heading to a runoff with Kevin Hardee.

Speaking of runoffs, Scott Talley and Tom Young will both be heading into runoffs in first place.

As for UTPL web clients, we want to send big congratulations to Senator Luke Rankin and Representative Thad Viers for their big win. Both are awesome guys to work with.

The night wasn’t all victories however. We lost a tough Solicitor’s race in the lowcountry. Blair Jennings would have been a great Solicitor, but Scarlett Wilson beat us out. We gave that race our all but still came up short. We’re awful at loosing and hate it especially for Blair.

All in all we had 10 first place finishes last night and one lost. On a whole a good record by anyone’s standards.

Now for those runoffs…

Wes

Godspeed Tim Cameron

A couple years ago Terry and I dreamed up this little Under The Power Lines gig, but it never really took off because we were too busy running campaigns to maintain lots of different websites. During a busy spell, one of our employees recommended that we hire his roommate Tim Cameron, who was fresh off the Philip Lowe State House campaign. Usually a State House campaign isn’t that big of a deal, but Tim helped a Republican win the State House seat with the highest BVAP in South Carolina. BVAP means Black Voting Age Population. If a district has a BVAP higher than about 35%, it’s pretty tough for a Republican to win in the General Election.

Anyway, we didn’t know Tim, but if he could help run a campaign and win in that kind of district, he was at a minimum, an incredibly hard worker. We took our chances on Tim and after a few months he helped us bring our little web company dream to life. He was our first full time employee and he’s been responsible for running many of our websites including Senator Jim DeMint’s. With Tim’s help, Senator DeMint has become known as one of the nation’s most “web-savvy” members of Congress.

We never would have “thunk it” possible, but our boy Tim has become a sought-after professional web-consultant. Tomorrow is his last day at UTPL as he is moving on to bigger and better things. He will be running the web operation for Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions.

Godspeed Tim. Just remember to shave. And get a haircut too.

- Wes

I want my iPhone

My blood pressure is rising. Not because there is an election in like five days or because I’m completely backed up on web work right now because of the election, but because I want a dang iPhone. We bought one for Lauren around Christmas time because she’s cool and trendy and just seems like the kind of person who really needs an iPhone to live, but the truth is…I’m that person that needs the cool trendy tech stuff to live.

Anyway, I got really close to buying an iPhone about two months ago. I went to the bank and took out the $700 I needed (because my debit card has a really crappy $500 limit) and I actually went to the AT&T store. And then I got there and realized the iPhone was only $400 and I was about to waste $300 on getting out of my SunCom contract. I sat in the store playing with iPhones for about 15 minutes and then consulted with Elizabeth. She tried to convince me that I “deserve” an iPhone, but I just turned away and walked out the door. So now I’m stuck with my three-year-old blackberry. Scratchy (that’s its name) has been very good to me and I hate to depart withit, but now is the time.

So, what’s getting me through this election cycle is the thought of a new iPhone sometime in the near future.

- Wes

It’s go time.

It’s been about a month since we last blogged. That’s because we are completely swamped and only 6 days from a big election. It’s go time around here. We are also in the middle of launching new websites for Senator Jim DeMint and one other special guest.

We will be back to normal blogging soon enough. In the meantime, you can always keep up with us through our nifty little Twitter feed…if Twitter is up today and not completely shut down like it’s been for the past two weeks.

Twitter…great idea. Lousy operation.

- Wes

PS - One more thing.  We have been receiving a ton of inquires about new web work. At this time we are not taking any new web clients until after the SC legislative run-offs on June 24th. If you can wait until then, we would be happy to hear from you. Just email me at wesley@politicalnetroots.com.