Wilson pulls upset of Gattis, who may run write-in campaign

WASILLA — In what might be best described as a political retelling of “The Tortoise and the Hare”, first-term Wasilla City Councilman David Wilson pulled off perhaps the biggest upset of Tuesday night’s primary, defeating state legislator Lynn Gattis 1,606 votes to 1,458.

The next day, both Republican candidates expressed their feelings with the same phrase — “shock and awe.”

“The door-knocking, phone calling, phone banking — just the interaction piece in connecting with the voters — that was really overlooked,” Wilson said of overcoming his underdog status. “No one talked to me to ask, ‘what are you doing?’ They brushed me under the table because I wasn’t raising money, not doing anything collecting dollars from people. That tells you I’m going to be good at spending other people’s money.”

For much of the campaign season, Gattis was sequestered in Juneau, where the legislature was meeting in special session to try to remedy the governor’s $4 million in vetoes. During that time, longtime Senator Charlie Huggins decided to resign and recommended Gattis move up from the House to fill his seat.

Gattis was with Huggins and his wife as the returns came in Tuesday night, the first showing her with a big early lead, due largely to early voting, that crumbled as fast as it grew. By the 11 p.m. posting, Wilson had passed her and pulled away to win by four points, or 152 votes.

Wednesday morning, she was wondering what she could have done differently.

“More important though, is what is the message? I’m still struggling with what the message is,” Gattis said. “Get rid of incumbents, I think I’m hearing.”

Like Gattis, Shelley Hughes was sequestered in Juneau and unable to campaign or fundraise in the meantime. She, however, managed to hang on to a 48-41 win over Adam Crum, who, like Wilson, used an intense get-out-the vote imperative to finish a strong second.

“I am feeling relieved; It was pretty grueling cramming a four-month campaign into four weeks,” Hughes said. “We had to overcome anti-incumbency attitudes across the state, do it with less funding than my opponent. There were some serious obstacles to overcome, and we did it.”

Hughes faces a Democratic challenger in November for Senate seat F in Samantha Laudert-Rodgers and the unaffiliated Tim Hale, but figures to be a heavy favorite.

Wilson has no other candidate for Senate Seat D in his way on the November ballot, but before he starts making too many plans, he might find himself contending with a write-in campaign from Gattis.

Wednesday’s postmortem revealed to Gattis that many of the anecdotal accounts from people she met around Wasilla, who assured her she had the primary in the bag; that Wilson was not a serious contender, were so confident in their own predictions, they didn’t bother to cast a vote.

“I’ve called a lot of people and they did not see or even smell this one coming. It was that and the lack of a get-out-the-vote,” Gattis said. “I think it was a sunny day, the day after school started, friends of mine, even, didn’t go vote. ‘It’s just Lisa (Murkowski) and Don (Young) and they’re going to win.’ And I said, ‘oh yeah, there’s one more vote.’”

Gattis has already begun looking at the possibility of a write-in campaign, which has some history of success in Alaska. Under somewhat similar circumstances, Murkowski won a write-in campaign to the U.S. Senate in 2010, just the second time in history that had happened.

“I’ll wait for my constituents,” Gattis said. “Basically, you all said I had it… If they come forward (I’ll run a write-in campaign).”

One major advantage Wilson employed was marketing and polling technology devised by his old college roommate. Shivani Tiwari, and his Anchorage-based company, Dubay Business Services, offered its services to all candidates, but possibly none used it quite so effectively as Wilson.

“The technology they’ve created is their own system of database and management of their system,” Wilson said. “It’s so user-friendly… It’s created by Alaskans for Alaskans. I plan to use it when I’m in (Senate) office. You can easily have a voter turnout poll that tells you, OK, where are the constituents on an issue? It gives you an instantaneous straw poll.”

Gattis was aware of, but didn’t use that technology, leaving Wilson with another advantage that couldn’t be measured by fundraising dollars or number of staff workers.

“I could have done better groundwork; I didn’t see it coming,” Gattis said. “His ground game beat what people were saying. He got his people out — you’ve got to give him credit for that.”

Though she’s the hare in this allegory, Gattis points out she was doing anything but napping in her time away — or for that matter, NAPing.

“There were folks who thought we (sequestered in Juneau) took a NAP — a ‘no action plan’” Gattis said. “But we were not taking a nap, trust me.”

Gattis said her case is a warning for any legislator anywhere who finds themselves away from their district for any significant span.

“If you’ve been out of town a long time, I suggest doing a poll that goes beyond going to every meeting and asking people what they thing,” she said. “Those people, I had their input, but what was out there lingering, I didn’t know. I would have done a poll.”