A cautionary tale to you all from North Dakota:
The ND GOP endorsed the machine candidate (the current AG) for governor at the convention. An upstart Fargo businessman (and multi-millionaire thanks to MSFT buying out his little accounting software firm) ran against him anyway in the Republican primary this week.
The upstart ran against "the good old boys"; he ran against the establishment's choice. This upstart was down 50 points in the polling in January (yeah, 60-10). But he spent a ton of personal wealth on the campaign.
And the upstart ran a campaign never seen before in ND. He took some good shots, some bad shots, and some cheap shots, at the establishment and its candidate. The upstart had a personality that would be easy to not like: a lot of ego, questionable use of some public grant dollars and tax reliefs. Some called it the worst campaign in ND history. And the most expensive for both sides.
And this upstart? We really truly don't know where he stands on the issues. During the campaign it was "excessive spending by the good old boys in the Legislature". Literally, yesterday, the day after the election he was talking about how the Legislature had done such smart spending hinting at his plans to spend like the last group. And they never could get a straight answer out of him on certain issues where the history shows he may have flip-flop-flop-flipped a couple times.
Tuesday ND spoke. Yeah, there were a lot of cross-over Dems; but, ND kicked out the machine's sure-win no-brainer candidate for the ego driven multimillionaire*.
Contextually, there are a lot of parallels to the Presidential race.
Beware of what people say versus what the do in that booth.
*The upstart will be governor because ND Dems have nothing in response come November.