Every election has one and unfortunately for Cliff Taylor he was the one this time. There is always one contest that rocks the political establishment because no one thought he or she would lose.

   It's been a long time since a sitting justice on the State Supreme Court has been convicted by the voters with this harsh verdict: Taylor 39% and Diane Hathaway 49%.  It was not exactly a cliffhanger.

   So the obvious question is, how did Mr. Taylor end-up in the unemployment line?  Let us count the ways.

   Nobody knew who Hathaway was yet the Michigan Chamber of Commerce plastered her picture all over its TV commercials thus violating the first rule of campaigning i.e. don't do anything that might help your opponent.

   We may never know, but the "sleeper" commercial may have helped, as well. Taylor claims he never dozed off on the bench but a woman in the democratic commercial claims he did.  A classic he said, she said battle of words and Taylor did not have the last word; the voters did.

    On top of that whenever the democrats passed out literature about Barack Obama, they neatly included Hathaway's picture and brief bio, too.

    Hathaway also had a God given advantage: her gender and her name. Being a female candidate in the Supreme Court race is worth about 7% of the vote because many pick a woman just because she is one. 

    Plus the Hathaway name is a good judicial moniker in the tri county area.  It's not up there with the Kelly's and the Cavanaugh's, but it ain't bad and she just proved it.

    And a final insult, Taylor outspent her on the tube but he could have spent more but never ran an ad refuting the sleeping charge. Somebody on his campaign was asleep to make that rookie miscue.

   

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