If it had been a boat, we would have dubbed it the Titanic. Instead, it was a political campaign that sunk.

I am talking about John Wiles losing his state Senate seat in the 37th District to west Cobb businessman Lindsay Tippens this past Tuesday.

It wasn't even close - 60 percent to 40 percent.

Don't blame the loss on an anti-incumbency mood within the electorate. All other Cobb legislative incumbents with the exception of Rep. Don Wix (D-South Cobb) won re-election. Wix had the misfortune of being in a district that is changing demographically.

Wiles, on the other hand, raised close to $150,000 to return to a job that pays $17,000. Hmm. There must be some other benefits to that job beyond free dinners from lizard-loafered lobbyists.

I'm not sure who - if anybody - was in charge of political strategy for Wiles, but the soon-to-be ex-senator ought to ask for a refund.

Give me $144,000 and I will not only get you re-elected to the state Senate but I'll get you on the short list for Pope.

What went wrong? Did anything go right?

His downfall began Dec. 22 at the now-infamous party in the tony Marietta Country Club neighborhood when a group of underage kids were busted for drinking at the home of one the associates at Wiles' law firm, Diane Busch, also a part-time magistrate.

According to police reports, Wiles arrived in short order to pick up his son and was quoted as asking a police officer investigating the affair not to give one of the teens a citation because it could jeopardize his college baseball scholarship. Busch is also reported as reminding the officers that they were talking to a real-live state senator.

That whole episode didn't play well with the public.

I don't know John Wiles personally. I don't know Lindsay Tippens, either, so I don't have a personal dog in this fight. What I do know is a little bit about politics and Wiles should have realized that he came away from that party looking like a powerful politician trying to throw his weight around in the wrong place at the wrong time. And he never corrected that perception.

Whether he wants to admit it or not, he was on the political endangered species list from that time forward.

Now we come to his campaign, which was a first class dud. Wiles is - or was - the newly-elected Whip in the state Senate and a power to be reckoned with - in the Senate. However, among We the Unwashed, that doesn't mean diddly. (Ask anybody you know what a whip does. They will likely tell you it makes a racehorse go faster.)

Then a group of his perception-impaired colleagues in the state Senate, who should have known better, threw him a campaign fund-raiser not in his district but at a fancy restaurant in ritzy Buckhead. Among the invitees were lizard-loafered lobbyists who brought fat checks.

Was there no place in his district to hold such a gathering? If he was worried about whether or not lobbyists would show up, he should have remembered that they will gather in the middle of Sope Creek to protect a sure thing. And incumbents are their sure thing.

With a fist full of dollars from companies like Lockheed Martin-Marietta, payday loan lenders, health care companies, banks and insurance agents, Wiles then rolled out endorsements from big guns like U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich. None of that seemed to matter to the voters.

In the meantime, Tippens -who raised less than half the money Wiles did - secured the endorsements of former Sheriff Bill Hutson and current Sheriff and local hero Neal Warren. You can keep your big-name politicos. I'll take the local sheriff's endorsement any day.

But endorsements don't win or lose elections. Wiles was ousted from his seat of power because he lost touch with the people who first put him in office.

Yeah, we are apathetic and we are not always up on the issues and we don't understand the inner workings of government, but we vote for reasons that slick campaign managers and powerful politicians don't always understand.

It's not about who you know or how important you are. It is about what voters perceive you to be. And perception is reality.

John Wiles lost the election last December.

You can reach Dick Yarbrough at yarb2400@bellsouth.net or P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, Georgia 31139.