The reason behind Hontiveros' amazing run

Many are disappointed that Risa Hontiveros only placed 13th in the senatorial race, just outside the Magic 12. They believe she deserves a seat in the Senate better than actor Lito Lapid who placed 11th, or even Teofisto Guingona III who salvaged 12th.

So strong is this belief that proposals have actually been made to declare her the 13th senator, as replacement for Noynoy Aquino who is bound to give up his Senate seat when he assumes the presidency on June 30.

This proposal, however, has been struck down by legal experts as unconstitutional, on grounds that no such vacancy exists at the moment, and that the 2010 elections were specifically for the election of only 12 new senators.

The parallelism drawn with the 2001 election in which 13 senators were elected is wrong because at the time, a joint resolution by both houses of Congress was passed specifying the need to elect 13 senators.

The fight between the 12th and 13th placer in that election was crucial because the 13th placer will only get to serve the remaining three years of the term of Senator Teofisto Guingona Jr., who vacated his seat in favor of his appointment as vice president by President Arroyo.

Thus, no matter how disappointed some people have been by the failure of Hontiveros to back a Senate seat, they can take comfort in the fact that her showing was in fact surprising and unexpected, and that, given such performance, maybe she can try again in 2013.

Actually, what many people do not realize is that Hontiveros is partly to blame for her falling just outside the winning circle. Had she taken to mainstream and conventional campaigning much earlier, she could have won enough support to make up for the balance she needed to win.

Prior to her run for the Senate, Hontiveros had been stereo-typed as a flag-draped angry woman who spends most of her time in street protests. Whether that assessment does her justice or not, the fact is the powerful medium of television helped make that image stick.

This was perfectly all right with her captive sector. But there was a larger uncommitted public turned off by television images of her getting drenched in the streets. This was a huge mountain to climb if she must make it to the Senate.

Hontiveros herself knew that while her captive sector was enough for two percent of the vote to secure for her a seat in the House of Representatives via the partylist system, it was never enough to get her into the Senate.

 And that is why Hontiveros had to shift to mainstream and conventional campaigning. She had to reach out to the larger uncommitted public to show them she was not just what television footages portrayed but actually someone of substance, a woman who made sense.

This shift is what helped open many minds about her. People began to see her in a new light, and this translated into many new votes that otherwise would have been withheld from her had she stuck with her base in the captive sector.

Even then, the shift came too late. Hontiveros simply had too much ground to cover and too little time to cover it. Just not enough people got the chance to discover for themselves who she was in person and the images they see on television.

Still her run for the Senate was truly amazing, a testament to the extent to which people can change if given the chance. The votes that drove her amazing run did not come from her captive sector. They came from those who rethought their preconceived notions about her.