The August 8, 2005 Peoria Journal Star printed a column by two political reporters entitled "word on the street." The first article was one of the most inane pieces of political journalism I have read in a long time. The point of the article seemed to be that the amount of money spent in the campaign was not very important in determining the winner of the campaign. The example given was that an incumbent councilman spent less than $10,000 on his campaign and won while two other council members who lost spent about $25,000 while both of their challengers spent less and still won. The writers also gave examples of the personal contact the winners had with the electorate especially the winning councilman. No empirical evidence was given!

Certainly, personal contact is important. It may have been the reason why that councilman won while the other two lost. Unfortunately, that conclusion can not be drawn from the information given in the article. First of all, although the article gives how much the councilman spent and how much was spent by each of the four candidates in the other two races, it glaringly does not give how much was spent by the losing challenger. Did he spend less than $1,000 while the councilman spent $8,000? Did the challenger spend $100,000 and still lose the election. We don't know; the article didn't say! Incredible!!!

The article did not give information in relation to other important aspects of the campaign. Did the challenger actually spend more time and effort on personal contacts and still lose? We don't know. No information was given. The article said the winners in the other two races were strong challengers to the incumbents. It said nothing about the strength of the candidate who challenged the councilman who won. Was he an unknown who did not have the qualifications possessed by the incumbent? We don't know; nothing was said in that area. We do know that the incumbent had sufficient qualifications to win a previous election. The only information given about the challenger was his name and that the incumbent received 53% of the vote. From the article, we can't even be sure the challenger received 47% of the vote.

Were there other variables that may have influenced the outcome of the election? We don't know because the article totally ignores the possibility of any other influence. It even ignores the possibility of policy differences being a factor in the election. Can you believe that policy differences were not even considered! John Kerry could have personally visited me fifteen times. He could have had me spend the weekend at his house as his personal guest. I may have changed my opinion of him as a person and his qualifications to be President. However, I still would have voted for President Bush. Policy positions do make a difference in an election. I wish the Journal Star would at least attempt to be creditable!