Nobody will know until June 17, one month after Mike is sworn into office.
Mysteriously, consulting fees have been left out of his previous financial reports, which is no surprise. It is common practice for candidates to pay consultants fees and bonuses after the election results come in, mainly because you pay for results. If I had to guess, I would bet it will be around $50,000. This of course would put Mike well over spending three times more then Kermit. Ironically he didn’t buy a Pro-Mike vote but an Anti-Staggers vote. While Mike (Hildebrand) did a fine job of showing the negative aspects of Kermit, I just feel Mike really didn’t sell the public as to why he would be so great for the community.
While I wish him the best of luck, I also know it will be a tough road for Mike. I can hear the voters already who supported him, “Okay, we knocked out Dr. No for you, what are yah gonna do for us?”
It was low hanging fruit for Hilde. All he had to do was ask around and he found plenty of Dr. Staggers’ record and reputation to exploit, whether or not it was warranted. The endorsements and non-endorsements backed up that perception as not just consultant generated.
Staggers’ had an opportunity to move where he needed to be to draw in some new voters, for whatever his reasons he decided not to. I think like Obama, his base would’ve shown up either way, even if he had to flip-flop on a couple issues. It’s not like Mike could’ve hit him for being inconsistent on his positions.
I also think that Kermit didn’t hire out a consultant because he knew he would’ve been at odds with their reccommendations.
At the end of the day, even with all the forces working against Kermit and for Mike, it was obvious Mike bought this election. Just imagine if he would have lost?