Because he and his campaign staff were blindly oblivious to what was happening in Milwaukee County:
The votes were still being cast Tuesday afternoon, when the campaign manager for county executive candidate Jeff Stone placed a call to Interim County Executive Mayor Pratt, asking if she could come to his courthouse office Wednesday and start working on the transition.
Pratt said he told Stone’s manager, Vi Hammelman, he’d be happy to work on transition issues with the winner. But Hammelman’s call seemed to be jumping the gun, he said.
I’m absolutely stunned that Vi Hammelman had no sense of the fact that Jeff Stone was going to have a rough night last night, given how effectively Chris Abele’s campaign had tied Stone to Gov. Scott Walker. I’m not entirely sure if Vi Hammelman owns a TV or has an internet connection, because if she did she surely would have noticed that Scott Walker’s popularity throughout the state (but especially here in Milwaukee County) has exactly skyrocketed the last couple of months.
I wonder if it was bluster or they legitimately thought they were going to win. Considering how much Abele beat Stone by, you’d think the Stone campaign had to have internal polling showing that the race wasn’t going to be close.
I doubt they had any internal polling, to be honest. If they did Hammelman wouldn’t have done something to presumptuous, because it seemed pretty clear to most rational folks that Stone was doomed.
On a strictly objective basis, I’m not impressed with Hammelman’s skills or judgement as a campaign manager. This is the same person who, before hiring someone to do community outreach, when said person warned “you should google me first”, Hammelman said “Naaahhhh why bother with google?”.