Carlin's Campaign Summary

Much to his own surprise, Carlin won the primaries and was the Democratic candidate for the 1978 election. His opponent, Robert Bennett, was running for reelection as governor and many didn’t give Carlin a chance in winning. Too many Kansans surprise the race ended up being closer than what any would have guessed it to be. For both candidates, it was a campaign of ads and discussing the major issues they would both be wanting to change if they were to win office. For Carlin, one certain aspect that he included in his ads, which his opponent did not, was to focus on the major issues that he and his campaign manager were willing to fix more than what his opponent was. This issue was the untidily issue and the Republican candidate realize all of this just too late for it to change the outcome of the election.
As Carlin says he is sure that his opponents advisors were saying that it wouldn’t work and once again they could just watch someone spend their money all for nothing and by the time the Republicans found out what was really going to happen it would be too late for them to make a change to the campaign.
For two whole years, Carlin worked on ways to win the campaign and it was during the last weekend before the election that he got the feeling that he would become the winner. Throughout the entire day, Bennett was ahead in the polls for most of the
day. So many of the newspapers had printed out saying Bennett would be returning to office, but as many know you can’t publish anything until all votes are counted and final numbers are in. The race for governor came down to the last possible second and the good gut feeling that many democrats had was right. John Carlin was the fortieth governor of the state of Kansas. Some of the key aspect that helped Carlin pull off the victory included; how focused he was on the current state issues and the number of TV ads he ran for his campaign.