Post-mortem Analysis

Ask 10 people what Real Results did to earn a last place finish in the School Board election and you will get 10 different opinions.

Here is mine.

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Real Results ran on their business credentials, their experience in the corporate world; they were the 'Executive Team'. By inference, Kids First was a bunch of "uneducated housewives" (actual quote from an RR blogger on Patch.com:)

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Now, in order to show us how business-y and executive-y and truly experienced they were, they felt the need to dress like attendees at a state funeral. And not in a cool country like France. More like Uzbekistan. Problem with that?

It signaled an out-of-touchness with actual, living, breathing people who have 'good' jobs but at the same time don't walk the streets like mannequins in Macy's window. My good friend, a conservative Republican who works on Wall Street, loses the business costume (dark suit and heels) when she's being a 'person' and a 'mom' in Hoboken.

I think it was a fundamental misjudgment to think that voters wanted BoE members in power suits and ties. No, they wanted real, warm human beings and not the tightly-controlled, rigidity and coldness of the corporate world. They wanted Board members who could manage children, not mutual funds.

Real Results, competence is not a power suit you pull out of your closet. Hoboken voters figured that out.

Fake Facts
Enough said.


Maureen
It started with Sullivan's February 14th resignation letter published in the print edition of in The Hoboken Reporter. Where she "resigns" from Kids First with a litany of accusations, ending with: "I’m not putting together a slate to challenge Kids First in April, but I encourage true reformers to demand accountability and consider running for the board."

But that's exactly what she was doing.

Please read Greg Bond's astute blog-piece Maureen First , his take on Sullivan tossing her former friends under the school bus. I concur with you, Greg.

From that day, it's gone straight downhill. Closed session information bandied about on blogs, loyal friends trashed on the 411 smear merchant's web site, an unholy alliance with said unscrupulous 411 smear-merchant and his impulse-driven associate, emergence as a partisan Republican endorsing a 100% partisan Republican School Board slate, covertly wooing Hoboken Republicans for our non-partisan School Board, posting a private email from a Kids First member on a public forum...

Ms. Sullivan has been fighting a very public battle for hearts and minds, but it is really a battle to validate the ideological differences she has with her former Kids First colleagues. If she had really wanted to help Real Results and not craft herself into a goddess of reform, she would have kept quiet and been dignified throughout the campaign. But she didn't and she wasn't.

And for that she may own the magnitude of Real Results' defeat.

Ouch.