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In the Auditor General campaign, we ran on merit alone. My wife was the only one qualified to do the job, with a direct background in accounting management. The Republican was a nice enough guy, but he was tired of his job as a state assemblyman and ran basically as the sacrificial lamb. The Democrat was the eventual winner, Robert Casey Jr., who had no accounting background whatsoever.
One of my wife's positions was that she would look into privatizing as much as possible of the audit work. On that basis, the Inquirer called her views "wacko". This enabled us to write a very solid letter to the editor, KNOWING that it would be published, reprimanding them for describing her views as such without having offered to interview her for their endorsement recommendations. In every following election they HAVE invited third-party candidates to the endorsement interviews, so that was our big moral victory. My wife got over 100,000 votes though, which was nice.
In the township commissioner race I ran, we expected to win. We developed a very strong attack piece directed at the Republican, who was the incumbent. It attacked him for voting to raise the salaries of the commissioners 25%. In that race my candidate walked the entire precinct, was invited to a civic association event, we had signs, etc. got 11% partly because our guy was not really the ideal type of candidate. To win as a third party or independent, at those kinds of levels, you really have to be a "neighborhood sort". Be a little league coach, know everybody on your block, have friends at the fire hall or whatever, etc. etc.
The R opponent that we attacked was a gruff, bitter old dude and it didn't bother me at all to attack him. Our piece had a picture of him with a big ol' circle and a slash through it, etc.
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