Ever since there have been politicians, there have been politicians missing roll call votes. Of course, voters have heard this attack before, so hearing that a politician had a bad attendance record had lost its shock value. But it was important for us to make this attack stick because Senator Jerry VanWoerkom’s race was slipping, and the 2006 anti-Republican wave was coming in Michigan. We knew we had to take the race away from a Republican/Democrat, conservative/liberal framework, and focus on a performance-related issue. So we turned our opponent’s attendance into a dollars and cents issue, and convinced voters to hang onto their reliable Senator.