Inside Sharron Angle’s Failed Campaign: “A Model Of Dysfunction”

In the mood for some dirt on the midterms? You’re in luck—yesterday, Shira Toeplitz of Politico published a long postmortem of Sharron Angle‘s campaign, which was apparently as poorly-organized and ineffective as Harry Reid‘s was compelling.

Toeplitz focuses most on Terry Campbell, Angle’s longtime aide and campaign manager. The writer uses an incident in which Campbell almost canceled an appearance by John McCain at an Angle campaign event as an example of the manager’s ineptitude:

While McCain was en route to the event, held five days before Election Day, Angle was bombarded with calls from teary tea party activists who begged her not to campaign with the Arizona senator because they contended he was not conservative enough to appear on the same stage with her.

The source of the emotional appeals from some of Angle’s most loyal followers? Campbell himself did the urging, according to multiple sources with first-hand knowledge of the incident. Much to the relief of national Republicans, Angle ignored their pleas, and the McCain event went on without a hitch.

“In the 20 years that I’ve been involved politically, I’ve never had the misfortune of working with such sheer, utter incompetence. Too much is at stake in these political campaigns — people like Campbell don’t need to be anywhere near them,” said Chris LaCivita, who served as political director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee this fall and worked directly with the Angle campaign. “If they were filming a sequel to the movie ‘Dumb and Dumber,’ Terry Campbell would have a feature role.”

Additionally, Campbell couldn’t keep track of the campaign’s finances, had a voice mail box that was constantly full, and didn’t answer emails for days—a serious handicap in the fast-paced world of 21st century campaigning. At one point he called the National Republican Senatorial Committee about President Obama‘s upcoming visit to Nevada, only to discover that Obama had arrived in Angle’s home state two days earlier.

And then there’s this:

Campbell frequently pitched unorthodox forms of advertising, such as buying advertisements on closed-circuit television cameras at gyms and hiring a plane to be called “Angle One” for sky-writing the candidate’s name — all of which were criticized as a waste of money by the professional operatives working on the race.

At one point, Campbell hired a digital billboard truck with Angle’s face on it that drove around the tourist-drenched Las Vegas Strip — a tactic he referred to as a “game changer,” according to three sources.

Though various outside organizations pleaded with Angle to fire Campbell, she remained fiercely loyal to her old friend—even when he chose to have elective knee surgery soon after her primary win, taking him out of the ring for several weeks. That blunder allowed Reid to get a head start on fall campaigning, launching ads that painted Angle “as an out-of-touch extremist — attacks that went unanswered for weeks,” writes Toeplitz.

Thanks in no small part to Campbell’s incompetence, Angle squandered the 11-point lead she had over Reid several days after the primary and ended up losing the election. The story of her campaign reads like a detailed report of what not to do when running for office. Read Toeplitz’s entire, fascinating account at Politico.