According to Paul Herrnson successful candidates in a campaign are those who "craft a message with broad appeal, set the agenda that defines voters' choices, and get thier voters to the polls on election day. So this week i've decided to apply this formula to the candidates Rodriquez and Canseco and see which one of them, tends to do an overall better job in this three separate categories.

       In terms of craft a message with a broad appeal, Ciro Rodriquez didn't really have a very  memorable overall theme throughout his election. Instead he tended to talk about his past accomplishments and what he had done so far as congressman. His main message seemed to be to encourage people to support and vote for him so that he could then continue to work on the issues that he claimed to be working on. I don't think that this was a very effective strategy for Rodriquez because it's not something that can really stick in people's minds, and of course every politician will claim that they have done everything that they set out to do from the very beginning. The American people however seem to be pretty disillusioned in regards to the idea of "honest politicians". And this is something that Canseco was very aware of and integrated into his main idea for his campaign. Canseco's main message was clearly to let the 23rd district know that his mission was to not only win his individual election but also for the republicans as a whole to take control, and kick out Nancy Pelosi because according to him the Democrats and President Obama were to blame for a lot of the unsatisfactory progress that was being done in the country.

       In regards to "setting an agenda that defines voters' choices". I personally feel that Rodriquez tends to do a slightly better job than Canseco in this aspect because since he is the incumbent he is knowledgeable of the issues that were a problem when he was being elected, and how those have played out during his terms, as well as how his constituents feel about his representation. So Rodriquez tended to talk more about individual issues, that he personally knew were important to his district. Canseco on the other hand obviously came in with a lot less knowledge especially since he wasn't very political before this campaign anyways. his agenda to me was very self-centered and seemed to revolve around doing whatever he had to do to get into office. 

     And finally, in terms of getting your voters to the polls on election day, it's hard to say who was more responsible for the turnout. I would say both candidates contributed into making this a closely watched race and therefore a high turnout. 

An Overview on Redistricting

       Redistricting is known as the process that happens every ten years to districts because of our growth and other general changes in our country's population. This is to ensure that the districts try and remain as fair and equally represented as they possibly can. However redistricting is not always as simple as it may seem and has a fair amount of guidelines and rules that are necessary to follow.

       The first and most likely biggest important piece of criteria for redistricting would have to be making sure that everyone has fair and equal population. Most people would probably think that this would be a basic commonsensical rule for everyone to abide by, but it wasn't actually until the ruling of Baker vs. Carr that the supreme court intervened in the redistricting realm and started to mandate certain critical rules be followed. If this rule had not been mandated then some districts would be allowed to grow unchecked thereby having a much higher amount population than other counties and messing up the idea of "equal representation".

      Another important aspect of redistricting is making sure that the district map lines actually look normal. Or in other words, these lines can't look peculiar or as an obvious way to "cheat the system". Sometimes district lines can be drawn so that certain parts of the district are very far apart from each other, and therefore tend to not even have a clear line of communication, this would allow people to use sheer numbers of that district's population for votes, but obviously this is not a fair way to do things.

    Another large factor taken into account that may have more of an effect on some districts than others, is the  issue of race. The supreme court declared that race must be taken into account when redistricting in order to assure that minorities are some-what represented.

      Redistricting criteria also sometimes involves aspects beyond land and population size such as overall Incumbent protection. The reasons for this rule are first so that, they can receive seniority in Congress which of course helps their party in the long run to accomplish the things that they want to do. Another benefit to this is that the incumbent might actually be popular and a good representative anyways. Out of all the rules, I tend to not agree with this one the strongest because I think that reasoning such as "seniority" just solidifies the tendency of politicians to do things for their own personal gain, instead of purely for the good of the people.







    

Realigning Election

        It's no secret that Fransisco Canseco was able to easily defeat his opponent incumbent Ciro Rodriquez, thereby shifting the control of Texas's 23rd district from Democratic control to Republican control. However Canseco's victory was not only a small personal victory for himself but also part of a larger victory for Republicans overall, because they were able to take over the house from the previous Democrat holders, making this congressional election one of the biggest realigning elections that we haven't seen since the time of "The New Deal"with their net gain of approximately 65 seats in the house.

        In regards to realigning elections there are mainly two types: Critical elections and Secular realignment elections. Critical elections are characterized by voters who are deeply concerned about the issues at hand, electoral involvement tends to be very high and voter behavior gradually changes over time. Secular realignment on the other hand has changes in voter behavior changing gradually over a period of time. 

        In my personal opinion I feel that this election could be categorized as a critical election realignment, because even though voter participation in congressional elections tends to be a lot less compared to an actual presidential election. I feel that Americans overall had a lot of concern about the democratic party in general and the way that they were running the country. There had been a lot of bad press about them and especially President Obama that was making the american people discontent with their progress or lack there of. Because of the concern over our growing problems with the country's economy and financial issues, it comes as no surprise to me that people would feel that the Democrats are the ones to blame and therefore think that in order to get things back to the way they used to be, cause a realigning election by booting out the Democrats and reinstating the Republicans.

    This is exactly what the republicans wanted to happen of course, now all we can do is wait and see how difficult Obama's job now becomes, and whether or not the Republicans hold of the house will somehow make things better than they were previously.