Political consultant turned third-party gubernatorial hopeful Jon Pelto is officially out of the race, collecting only about half the necessary signatures to make it on the ballot.
The final count was confirmed by Secretary of State Denise W. Merrill, who sent out a press release Friday. According to the Secretary of State, Pelto collected a mere 4,318 qualified signatures, thousands short of the necessary 7,500 he needed to appear on the ballot.
This says to me, perhaps, his message didn’t have the traction he thought it did–nor did his campaign operation.
Even one-term town councilmen and tea-party gun-nut Joe Visconti was able to gain ballot access in the liberal bastion that is Connecticut.
Think about this way. Visconti was basically up against the same odds as Pelto—running a petition drive without a political party apparatus. Only Visconti was in worse straits since he neither had Pelto’s decades of political experience, nor the constant stream of free PR courtesy of an enamored press core.
Still, Visconti collected over 10,000 signatures, where Pelto could barely eke out 4,300. (Btw, that’s about 0.1 percent of the electorate).
According to these numbers, the guy on the horse in full cowboy regalia is a more credible candidate than Pelto.
Apparently the difference was Visconti’s campaign organization was centralized and, I suppose, actually organized. That’s why, according to the Hartford Courant’s Jon Lender, when reporters asked Visconti how many signatures he collected he knew right away. Pelto, on the other hand, just guessed.
One has to wonder, how did the illustrious Jon Pelto fail so spectacularly, especially someone once hailed as a “political genius”?
How could he have even hoped to run a “credible campaign” when his petition drive was so disorganized that it couldn’t come close to the 7,500 valid signatures?
For hire: Political consultant who saw 3,800 signatures and saw 50,000 to 100,000 votes.
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