Dear Friends-
The last 3 months have been an incredible experience and I am so proud of what was achieved during my first foray into politics. As part of wrapping up this process, I set out to do a postmortem analysis on the campaign to learn which parts of the campaign performed strongly and which were a potential misallocation of resources. Along the way I was fortunate to work with many outstanding individuals, some of whom I mention below. In addition, getting to know my opponents (many of whom represent local government functions and have held positions within the government) was an outstanding way to gauge the operations of the local government and to learn about the power of party and establishment.
I was pleased that despite much pressure to go negative, I was able to remain a sober adult and run a positive campaign. One of my main goals in this election office was to show that you can remain positive, decent, and kind while running for office; I am proud that my campaign was able to achieve this goal.
Lastly, I was overwhelmed with the amount of support I received from people I knew and the friends I was fortunate to make along the way. In addition to everyone that assisted with the campaign (Judie Brailsford, Mark Fierro, Jeff Haney, Renee Roberts, Byron Goynes, Ryan Hamilton, Russell Letizia, Tom Letizia, Vianney Marino, Jose Solorio, Liza Zenkin,) I am especially grateful to the following individuals for their incredible energy, enthusiasm and reinforcement.
Patricia Farley – I am proud to call Patti a long-time friend. Her successes in politics and business speak for themselves and her support was instrumental in helping my campaign deal with negative PR related to my ex-wife. Patti was crucial in reminding us that while the #Metoo movement should remain as one of the top issues we look at as a society, one woman’s unsubstantiated and untrue claims do not and should not assassinate the character of a family man.
Robert Eglet and Peter Palivos – Robert and Peter have been instrumental in pushing the fight against opioid manufacturers to the forefront. I have been fortunate to work with Robert and Peter as one of the leaders in drug treatment and prevention and Nevada and appreciate their financial and other support and look forward to further collaboration.
Tommy White, Marvel and the Laborers Union Local 872 – Tommy and Marvel provided the campaign with incredible canvassing and signage support. I appreciate them individually and as a group recognizing my 20-year CEO experience and my ability to lead the Ward and community in addressing problems that need attention and action.
Vicky Quinn – While I was very disappointed that I was not successful, I was more disappointed that I let Vicky Quinn down. Vicky was one of, if not the biggest cheerleaders for my campaign. Las Vegas is lucky to have such a caring and selfless planning commissioner working every day for the good of her community.
Kelly Boyers – Not only did Kelly help host neighbor meet and greets, Kelly graciously assisted the campaign with vital logistical issues. She was instrumental in connecting me with many people and organizations and I appreciate all that she did to help in this race.
Kyle Stephens – Kyle’s help and advice was invaluable in reaching various groups. I am fortunate and honored to be able to call him a friend.
Campaign Team and Canvassers – I am thankful to every member of the campaign team for helping me go through this experience. It was a joy and honor to learn from each one of you and I am proud of the work we accomplished as a team.
My wife, Carolina, and my family – This adventure would not have been the same without the love and support of my family. I am eternally grateful for them putting up with my wild ideas and are the foundation without which I could not pursue my dreams.
1) VOTER FILES
Total Votes for Ward 1 – 4612
Total Votes for Dave Marlon – 792
Total Committed Yes Votes via Canvassing -730; 244 voted, 486 did not vote
Total Undecided Votes via Canvassing – 762
2) VOTING RESULTS
3) TOTAL WARD 1 VOTES BY PARTY
4) DAVE YES VOTES BY PARTY
5) INDIVIDUAL EFFORTS
LDS Effort:
Committed Votes – 16
Actual Voted – 10
Close ratio – 62%
Spanish Effort:
Committed Votes – 121
Actual Voted – 7
Close ratio – 6%
Senior Effort
Locations Visited – 5
Perspective Votes ~350
Committed Votes – unknown (were not surveyed)
Actual Voted – 65 (40 mail ballots from Chris Vito)
Estimated Close ratio – 18%
Canvassing Effort
Committed Votes – 730
Actual Voted – 244
Close ratio – 33%
Religious Outreach
C3 Church
ICCLV Church
Jewish Chabad
6) ELECTION RESULTS
Brian Knudsen came in 1st place, with 1,245 votes; Robin Munier came in 2nd place with 924 votes and David Marlon came in 3rd place with a total of 792 votes.
ANALYSIS
In analyzing the above numbers, Dave Marlon lost to Brian Knudsen by 453 votes and by 132 votes to Robin Munier. We have concluded the below reasons to have the most outcome on the results of the election.
1) Running as a non-partisan was a significant factor in the outcome of this election. As shown in figure 2, majority of the voters remain highly partisan. Interestingly enough, of the votes canvassed that were for Dave, the break-down by party affiliation mirrored that of the total votes cast in the Ward 1 election.
2) Four weeks before the election, Dave’s ex-wife released a negative PR story via the Nevada Current and Las Vegas Review Journal that, while untrue, the campaign was unable to successfully defend or respond to.
3) Get out the vote effort: while we were successful in getting 700+ voters to commit to voting for Dave, only 244 of those actually came out and voted. Having a more effective GOTV effort would could have single-handedly changed the outcomes of the election.
4) Data challenge: the campaign utilized Ecanvasser – an application that was good in some areas, but sorely lacking in data manipulability. Early vote files had to be manually extracted, resulting in survey and canvass data loss down the line, which delayed the GOTV effort. In addition, the application suffered numerous technical challenges that resulted in data loss and inaccuracy. Lastly, the city voter files contained many erroneous phone numbers, and an independent consultant was used to obtain cell phone numbers for registered voters. Integrating the phone numbers into the application proved to be a difficult task, which also contributed to a slow and less accurate GOTV effort.