What Now?

Who will be the nominee of the Republican party for Salt Lake County Mayor?

Despite all the hoopla about ballots yet to be counted, I believe it’s a virtual certainty that the nominee will be Mark Crockett. Why?

First, a huge percentage of the votes were digitally recorded. The possibility that a calculator will add the same numbers twice and get two different answers is remote. There will be no hanging chads in Salt Lake County.

And second, while Winder makes much of the tiny 269 vote margin separating him from Crockett, and the 7,500 votes not yet counted, it’s important to remember when these uncounted votes were cast.

Almost all were cast early, and on election night Crockett had a 5% lead at the very beginning. That’s important because those initial results were entirely composed of early voting. Therefore, you could assume that those early results similarly apply to the uncounted ballots which were also cast early.

Anything could happen, of course, but I think the smart money is on Crockett.

What happens next?

While I believe Crockett will ultimately prevail, I don’t think the uncounted votes will take the results beyond the one vote per precinct threshold that precludes a recount.

When the official voter canvas is announced on July 10th, Mike Winder will request that recount. So we probably won’t have an official winner of the primary until a day or two after that. Therefore, the race won’t officially begin for about two weeks.

This is what you call an awkward pause.

What do we so with that pause? It’s appropriate for the McAdam’s camp to publicly pay respect to the process as it moves forward. However, in private I’d be focussing like a laser on Mark Crockett. And if Crockett decides to take his “titular victory” seriously and moves into active campaign mode, I’d be ready to respond.

Because at some point the Crockett campaign will move, and it will move vigorously and early, to define Ben. Both candidates have relatively low voter ID, and each is vulnerable to being defined by the other. The campaign that takes the initiative first, and does so effectively, will have a lasting advantage.