Adam Andrzejewski places fifth in Illinois GOP governor's race

Despite the endorsement of former Polish President Lech Walesa, and generous last minute coverage by conservative bloggers and conservative media giants, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, it appears that Adam Andrzejewski will not be the "next Scott Brown," nor will he be the next governor of Illinois.  Andrzejewski came in fifth in a crowded GOP primary yesterday.

Warner Todd Huston at Big Government thinks the Illinois primaries show the limitations of the Tea Party movement:

Tea Party groups spilt their votes between Dan Proft and Adam Andrzejewski. Andrzejewski got a last minute surge from Tea Partiers, but it was too late to help. But if you combined the polling numbers that Proft and Andrzejewski were seeing into one that number was a winning number. Unfortunately, the vote was spilt between the two candidates, not settled on just one of them.

The sad fact is that the Illinois Tea Party groups didn’t spend any time organizing, polling each other, coordinating with each other. There was no effort from one Tea Party group to reach out to another one and work together. They all stayed in their own little area, met in their own little meetings, had their own little candidates forum, and made their own little decisions.

This method is fine for village elections or State Reps and State Senators. It’s likely even good for County elections. But it does not work for federal elections or statewide elections where several candidates per office are vying for attention and support. Sure this method is particularly important and powerful for local elections, it just doesn’t work at higher levels than that.

I think Huston makes a valid point. Hopefully the Tea Party movement will learn from this experience and quickly coalesce around preferred conservative candidates that survive the primary season across the country.