Mistakes happen in every campaign. But like I have been saying, a particular campaign team is more of a liability than an asset.
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Ernesto Bustillos and Josh Dagda have apparently struck again.
D'oh!
Fresh off of a campaign in which they struggled to reach 15% despite having endorsements from major community leaders, the newspaper, and a fundraising edge on the last report for a Latina candidate in a border community, the dynamic duo have apparently struck again.
This is an expensive mistake too. And probably costly.
The text messages and phone calls started coming in Thursday afternoon. When I got home I confirmed it by checking my own mailbox.
What is the mistake?
Apparently most of the mailers that went out for Tax Assesor Collector Candidate Siria Rocha where addressed to the WRONG NAMES!
That is way up there with the time Forma sent out Tania Chozet's GOTV piece that landed after the election was over!
Depending on how big her universe was, that cost a lot of money to send out. The wrong names on the mailer mean the wrong targets received the mail, people who should have received it likely didn't, and many won't even read it.
This is the one sent to my place. They got my address right. Now while my grandfather has a picture where he sorta looked like Javier Solis, we are in fact, not the Solis family.
Huge, huge, huge mistake.
Especially because it's so difficult to even get someone to read a mailer in the first place! And, true story, even though I knew what the mistake was before I hit my mailbox, I still almost tossed the mailer because the mailer looked more like an ad for a product than a political message.
It was "capirotada". That's what we call a mailer that has a bunch of different messages all tossed in together. Great during lent, but terrible for a mailer.
The message is garbled and ineffective. In fact that mailer is so busy throwing rocks at the other candidate, it never gets around to who to vote for or when.
There are ways to do negative mailers and ways to not do negative mailers. The only thing this mailer is good for is to demonstrate how NOT to do a negative mailer.
So maybe it's actually a blessing for Rocha that her campaign team screwed up and sent it to the wrong people.
But man, I'll bet that was a lot of money. It wouldn't shock me if she took it out of their pay or makes them compensate her for their mistake.
We'll see on the 8 day report, but these are the perils of getting a consultant that has more than one client in the election cycle and can't manage it.
Oh yeah, one more thing. When I was checking around to see how bad the mistake was, calling friends and sources throughout the county that I knew would have been likely recipients, I was mildly surprised that Michael Apodaca, aka Juro Duran, is still getting mail from Rocha's campaign. If I recall correctly that was her February D'oh!
I'm really gonna miss this election cycle!