Gibbons sure is gracious in defeat

I have had a couple people send me over some stuff that Kevin Gibbons has said in the wake of being thumped by Russell Pearce last week. Here are two really caught my eye:

One was from the Yellow Sheet, which is the daily gossip report of the Capitol Times.

"He told our reporter last night Pearce’s victory was due to a combination of low voter turnout and 'brilliant' maneuvering by Pearce’s campaign managers. The voter turnout portion of Gibbons’ strategy was obvious, as core voters in LD-18 love Pearce, and he would be unable to sway them. But the strategy from Pearce’s camp, he said, was 'very, very interesting.' 'His handlers muzzled him and probably told him to keep his head down and stay indoors so you don’t put your foot in your mouth,' Gibbons said. Instead of Pearce delivering his message, surrogates, Farnsworth, his wife, local party officials and the like, took the message to the voters and media."

The other is from Arizona Republic's Political Insider.

"Gibbons then took it another level, leveling complaints against ... the voters themselves. His campain noted that 'revelations of Pearce's disturbing voting record and personal associations seem to have been ignored by voters.'

Gibbons capped it all with this assessment comparing Mesa voters to those in Washington, D.C., who cast ballots for Marion Barry following a 1990 drug bust for crack cocaine use and possession.

"'I don't think we should be surprised,' Gibbons wrote. 'Let's face it, Marion Barry was twice elected mayor of Washington, D.C.'"

So, Kevin Gibbons is going around telling the media that everyone is to blame besides him. Perhaps if he had spent a little time telling the voters who he was instead of directly attacking Pearce, he would have had a little bit of credibility to stand on. Certainly, all of the personal attacks on Pearce didn't help Gibbons, but Gibbons and his team did very little to build the Gibbons brand. What did he stand for? Who was endorsing him? How was he going to work with Mesa? These are things that he should have been working on. Plus, as I have mentioned before, it became abundantly clear that Gibbons knew about the attacks ahead of time when he donated the money to the domestic violence shelter and the Anti-Defamation League.

Blaming everyone for ganging up on him and comparing Russell Pearce to Marion Barry is sure going to get people excited to support him the next time he decides to run for something. Losing an election is not the end of the world, but losing it bitterly and being a sort loser is something that people will remember.