One very wise man once told me when you are campaigning, even if you are down 30 points, you never concede you could lose. In fact, he told me in no uncertain terms to never say that word. This was back in 1984 during my first political campaign when I was walking door to door for Senator Charles Percy in Illinois. He was a long-term incumbent Republican and was facing a challenge from then Congressman Paul Simon. It was close to election day and the Percy campaign was self-imploding. The county chair of his campiagn would tell us every morning: don’t admit defeat to anyone. Make the senator look as strong as you can.

Percy lost a very close race only because of Ronald Reagan’s coat tails made the race closer than it should have been.  He ran a terrible campaign and imploded the last few weeks.

You also saw this very same principle put to work this spring in the Gingrich and Santorum campaigns—they stayed on message even when they were getting hammered. Gingrich took it a little too far, but he never conceded until the very end, and even then it took a couple of weeks for him to come out in support of Governor Romney.

This morning Bud Kennedy of the Star-Telegram tweeted:

@budkennedy: A @repvickitruitt campaign email: “Without a huge turnout for me between now and 5/29, I will be bidding you adieu.”

I got a text message shortly after that tweet went out, and I started texting other people to see if I could get a copy of the email. I ended up with a couple of people forwarding it to me. One person said I couldn’t use it, as she was too scared what might happen if it was tracked back to her (lovely world we live in isn’t it); the other said I could use it as long as I didn’t include the headers.

I’ve decided to just put up parts of the email:

Did you see this? They’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars against me – and it’s working. If we don’t turn out people en masse during these last three days of Early Voting and next Tuesday, I am toast.

A very wise reader of this blog called me this morning and told me it was a trap. He felt that Truitt is trying to keep Gio’s voters from going to the polls by admitting that the polls are in his favor. Trying to get them to feel overconfident. While that may be her reasoning, it doesn’t wash with me because of what I’ve written about here before. The low turnout is killing her, because she knows that low turnout means the hard core voters are the ones showing up. Those hard core voters are conservative and informed.

They are also the people Gio has been targeting the last two years. He has visited nearly all of them at their house and has talked to a great majority of them in person. He has asked them eye-to-eye for their support. These are the grassroots of the party; they love it that they are involved in a campaign.

More from the email:

They’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars against me – and it’s working.

Don’t believe it. I’ve done some serious digging around financial reports that were due on Monday, and I can find less than $50,000 of money spent by outside groups for Gio. Compare that to the list of PACs that have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Truitt. You can see her latest lists here and here.

Notice how few people in the district have given to her campaign, then go to Gio’s latest filings here and here. Notice this is a grass roots campaign, and still largely self-funded. If there is one beef I have with Gio, is he really doesn’t know how to ask people for money. He isn’t made that way I guess, and he’d rather fund it from his own pocket. He told me to quit giving him money, and to tell you the truth it made me mad.

You can see Empower Texas’ filings here and here, and Texas Right to Life here

The big money is giving to Truitt in this race—don’t let her fool you. What has me and a few other people I have talked to today is the question……. why is she sitting on a quarter of a million dollars? I know she’s doing three robocalls a day, but they are real cheap. I mean pennies, if I were her I’d be pushing mail every single day as she did this time two years ago, but I guess I’m not smart. Heck if I was I’d be making a $15,000 a month retainer like Bryan Eppstein does with his clients.

Back to the email:

[Name redacted], CAN YOU PLEASE SEND THE FOLLOWING TO YOUR EMAIL LIST, AND DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO TURN OUT THE VOTE FOR ME. I CAN’T STAND THE THOUGHT OF TURNING THIS DISTRICT OVER TO SOMEONE WHO WILL BE A PUPPET FOR MQS.

This is the same old song and dance that incumbents around the state are singing. The Democrats use the Koch Brothers, saying every single Republican is bought and paid for by them and the mainstream media goes along with the meme. This cycle, left-leaning incumbents are saying the boogie man is MQS (Michael Quinn Sullivan) and papers like the DMN and FWST are going right along with them. The sad thing they don’t understand, every time the main stream media attacks MQS, he gets stronger with the base. It’s the Sarah Palin effect on a state level. Regular people have no idea who MQS is, until the paper writes about him and Empower Texas, and every time they do they make him more and more popular.

There is a need for concern.
The other day I received a phone call from a long-time friend and supporter here in District 98. He was upset about all the attack pieces against me that have been bombarding his mailbox. He wanted to know why someone would spend so much money to run for state representative.

My friend said that he believes that most people will assume that my opponent is paying for those pieces. But he is not.
Outsiders are trying to buy influence.
Austin lobbyist, Michael Quinn Sullivan (Ron Paul’s former press secretary) — the same lobbyist who recruited my opponent, is funding the vast majority of the attack pieces.
Now WHY do you suppose this Austin lobbyist and his Midland millionaire financier are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to DEFEAT me?

It’s very simple. It’s about power and control. They don’t control me. They have tried; and I refused to allow it. I work for YOU, THE PEOPLE of the 98^th District.

Lets go back and look at her financials again…….who is being bought and paid for? You can even go back for past years, she has received many hundreds of thousands of dollars in PAC money from Austin over the years while taking in token amounts of money from the district.

The outsiders’ focused, false attack ads against me are working.

What people don’t understand, why do candidates go negative? It works. And they aren’t false, the pieces I have seen all say the same thing. Vicki wanted to raise the gas tax, in fact she said that she “would fall on her sword” for the increase in taxes and that she voted for in state tuition for illegal immigrants. Those are facts…..facts she doesn’t want you to know, but facts none the less.

Just know this . . . the negative attack ads are influencing undecided voters – most of whom do not know me. One of the issues they’ve been grossly misleading people about a professional contract I have with JPS. They say that the only reason I have that contract is because of my position. This is ludacris. I’ve attached two documents to disprove their allegations. Their statements regarding this have been nothing short of slander.

She’s a fourteen year incumbent…..fourteen years!!! If the voters don’t know who she is, whose fault is that? I have told the story on here about how my Grandfather who was a Precinct Chairman remained in office…..he had the paper boys on the “payroll”. Every time a new person moved into the precinct, the paperboy would let my Grandfather know, and he would go see them in person. He made sure the people of Kankakee knew who he was, and they also knew that if they needed something, to give him a call. If after 14 years your constituents don’t know who you are, then you have lost touch in your district. Not something I would want to admit to.

I didn’t get the attachments, but if the word she was looking for is libel, slander is legally defined as defamation by oral utterance rather than by writing, pictures, etc. The way I look at it, the Star Telegram has multiple lawyers on their staff, and they haven’t withdrawn the story. The fact is she has a no bid contract with the County, purely from an optics standpoint, that is bad news for her. She should have insisted that her contract be put out to bid, and win the fair and square way……

If you don’t want to see the representation of this district turned over to an Austin lobbyist, please help me.

Uh, again, let the facts speak for themselves. Look at her financials and tell me who is representing HD98. Why would Representative Truitt be the one to sponsor a Payday Loan bill? Do you see a bunch of Payday Loan places in Keller? Colleyville? SOUTHLAKE??? Oh yeah, they must all be in Westlake.

Take a look at her contributions, and it will become pretty obvious before you get off the first two pages.

What we are seeing in HD98 is no different than what happened in Indiana with Senator Dick Lugar. And Lugar was smart enough that his email updates up to the very bitter end were talking about Lugarmentom and how he was going to carry the day.

Lugar ended up losing by 20 points…….

Yes Ms. Truitt, you are toast.

As my son said today, time to get out the jelly