City Council District 8

[sgrizzle]

Bill Christiansen vacated the seat leaving previous challenger Phil Lakin to face new challenger George Gibbs on Tuesday. the winner will face William Suliburk in the general.

Thoughts?

[sgrizzle]

As someone somewhat familiar with City Council campaigning in District 8, I'm quite shocked by the amount of negative campaigning I've seen from lawyer George Gibbs. I'm getting a flyer a day full of the kind of stuff I expect from talk radio shock jocks.

District 8 race just got weird.

[Conan71]

I suspect Lakin will win by a decent margin.

[Gaspar]

I suspect Lakin will win by a decent margin.

I intend to vote for Lakin though because I will always vote for a business man over a lawyer, and Lakin actually takes the time to spell out how he stands on issues on his website.  Gibbs seems like he basically wants the seat for the sake of being on the city council. We've had enough of those.

[Bat Bat]

I think it is Lakin's race to lose, but I will be voting for Gibbs.

I can't say that I approve of Gibbs' campaign tactics of late, but I believe that Lakin has too much going on and too many conflicts to serve as my city councilor.

[T.Ruth]

http://www.batesline.com/archives/2011/09/tulsa-district-9-g-t-bynums-conf.html

Lakin is named in Bynum's ethics violations.

[mrsgrizzle]

Stopped by to vote this morning at a little before 8 and there were already 22 votes on the counter. Impressive since the last vote I showed up at 3 pm and was number 16. They only had 26 total that time. Hopefully we see a good turnout today.

[sgrizzle]

This race was much closer than I thought, with Gibbs in the lead at points. Lakin sent out a last-minute flier to defend against Gibbs' negative fliers last week. Weird race.

[Gaspar]

This race was much closer than I thought, with Gibbs in the lead at points. Lakin sent out a last-minute flier to defend against Gibbs' negative fliers last week. Weird race.

Laken robo-called at 5:30 with a message that basically said 'We've had very few people show up at the polls, you only have an hour and a half left to vote against the negative. . . and then named several of Gibbs campaign flyers and negative ads. I think it may have been very effective.

[tulsaboy]

I think it's actually pretty remarkable that Gibbs did as well as he did.  Lakin spent about 90k two years ago against Christiansen, which built his name ID in the district.  He came back and spent, I'm going to guess, around 70k this time.  Gibbs was a nobody as far as voters were concerned, and probably got outspent 2-1 (he had about 21k on his report, and got the firefighters' money and I'm sure more, so you've got to figure 30-35k).  Gibbs only lost by 300 or so votes, and got more raw votes than any other candidate on Tuesday except Lakin, GT and Jack Henderson.  And he did it all without the BizPac money or Karl Ahlgren's dirty tricks.  Not bad this cycle, compared to other candidates.  Will be interesting to see how Lakin does over the next 2 years, and whether or not Gibbs follows Lakin's example and reappears in a couple of years...

[Conan71]

I think it's actually pretty remarkable that Gibbs did as well as he did.  Lakin spent about 90k two years ago against Christiansen, which built his name ID in the district.  He came back and spent, I'm going to guess, around 70k this time.  Gibbs was a nobody as far as voters were concerned, and probably got outspent 2-1 (he had about 21k on his report, and got the firefighters' money and I'm sure more, so you've got to figure 30-35k).  Gibbs only lost by 300 or so votes, and got more raw votes than any other candidate on Tuesday except Lakin, GT and Jack Henderson.  And he did it all without the BizPac money or Karl Ahlgren's dirty tricks.  Not bad this cycle, compared to other candidates.  Will be interesting to see how Lakin does over the next 2 years, and whether or not Gibbs follows Lakin's example and reappears in a couple of years...

Lakin might have had a bigger war chest this time, but I heard his Uncle George lost some money on a business venture out on the west coast. 

[sgrizzle]

I think it's actually pretty remarkable that Gibbs did as well as he did.  Lakin spent about 90k two years ago against Christiansen, which built his name ID in the district.  He came back and spent, I'm going to guess, around 70k this time.  Gibbs was a nobody as far as voters were concerned, and probably got outspent 2-1 (he had about 21k on his report, and got the firefighters' money and I'm sure more, so you've got to figure 30-35k).  Gibbs only lost by 300 or so votes, and got more raw votes than any other candidate on Tuesday except Lakin, GT and Jack Henderson.  And he did it all without the BizPac money or Karl Ahlgren's dirty tricks.  Not bad this cycle, compared to other candidates.  Will be interesting to see how Lakin does over the next 2 years, and whether or not Gibbs follows Lakin's example and reappears in a couple of years...

Ahlgren isn't the only campaign manager with dirty tricks... Gibbs attack ads really soured my view of him.

I was surprised at the money he raised. Had he had a better platform, communicated better and/or not sounded like a bitter old man, he would've won.