Spank That Donkey

 The Scott Sayre challenge to Senator Emmett Hanger in VA's 24th Senate District race is really picking up steam.  Latest evidence of Grass Roots support is the eight bloggers already on board the new Bloggers 4 Sayre blog!  That would be eight Valley/SWAC bloggers signed up since Noon, the day before yesterday!

As of this time I am only aware of one pro - tax increase blogger (they call themselves Fiscal Conservatives), blogging in support of Emmett.  I guess we can expect a full court press from Dem bloggers in support of Emmett, since he voted for Gov. Mark Warner's $1.5 Billion dollar tax increase in 04', and with Gov, Kaine's tax increase plan plus more in SB708 crafted by the now retiring Senator Chichester. 

As far as can be seen the Hanger campaign is three weeks late on the sign campaign as the Sayre Team has been blitzing since the Maple Sugar Festival.  Rumor has it Hanger bought a lot of signs for his failed LG run in 05', so the signs are probably just sitting some where in storage.

 The official line on why Sen. Hanger did not get on the ballot for the 05' LG race was that his son got 'caught in traffic', and reached the door just minutes after the filing dead line.  The filing period is about three weeks long to get the signatures in and the eventual winner LG Bill Bolling had his in four or five days after the first day to get them in.  The only time I saw a Hanger petition come around was one SWAC Breakfast... i.e we weren't working it.

The reason I mention this is that grass roots support is key to winning primaries.  I was a volunteer for Bolling along with virtually the entire Augusta County Grass Roots Network.  We got over 500 names on petitions, and had them to the Bolling & McDonnell campaigns a week ahead of time...   When it came to the sign campaign, we only got about 10 or 12 4x8's that I remember, and only a few McDonnell's, but they were up as soon as they came in.

The Augusta sign machine is humming along for Sayre, and of course 'Signs don't Vote', but for a challenger, name recognition is the name of the game...  The best part of this is we are not having to beg for signs like during the "W", Kilgore and Allen Campaigns.. We got tons of them, and people coming out of the wood work to give us locations!