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The AfD closed as no consensus. Many votes were for redirect, hence thie merge and redirect discussion. The subject fails WP:GNG and WP:POLITICIAN for independent notability. The election is notable, the candidate is not. – Muboshgu (talk) 18:11, 15 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: The most notable thing about Parnell in my opinion, and the aspect that has received the most independent and non-routine media coverage, is his advertising style. If that information can be merged seamlessly into this article I would be fine with the merger, but I think it would be more useful for readers to have the information about Parnell's campaign and ads be on his page, rather than on the general election page.--HighFlyingFish (talk) 22:33, 15 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose merger: I think Parnell achieved notability with his campaign. The Parnell article cites a source article entitled "How Archie Parnell Ran the Best Democratic Campaign of 2017." The article's author seemed to be making a serious assertion, not a joke. The superlative "best", in a category that significant, supports a claim of notability. There are articles about his campaign's ads, which tended to focus on the person himself, not issue positions.
I also think Parnell got more national-scale press coverage than congressional candidates usually do, to a degree that achieves notability, but there's no consensus on that claim. In the recent deletion discussion, several editors took the view that special election candidates "always" get lots of coverage. So it might take some research to achieve consensus on whether a press-coverage claim applies, either way. The deletion discussion referred to three examples of candidates who had not won office, but were judged Wikipedia-notable. They had much more press coverage than Parnell. So that standard seems too high for Parnell, and maybe too high in general. -- econterms (talk) 20:18, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Well, no, special election candidates don't always get lots of coverage — but they do always get the amount that's actually been shown here. If Parnell got more than usual, this article sure isn't showing evidence of that. Bearcat (talk) 03:02, 22 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect. The path to getting a non-winning candidate into Wikipedia because candidate is to show that they got a lot more coverage than normal. That's not what this article is showing, however — every candidate in any election could always show just nine references, so that's not enough to deem his candidacy a special case. But being a special case is the standard he would have to meet to warrant a standalone BLP separate from the election article itself — and it's not enough to just say he's a special case. The depth and breadth of sourcing has to show him as a special case, and again nine footnotes is not enough to clear that bar compared to Jon Ossoff's 50+ and Christine O'Donnell's 160. Bearcat (talk) 03:02, 22 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
User:Bearcat: Is there evidence for this repeated emphasized proposition that special election candidates "always" get this level of coverage? Parnell's discussed in multiple Washington Post and Politico articles plus other national publications like Vox and Huff Post. His name is in the headlines of some of these. I do not see a reason to accept this proposition that special election candidates, e.g. for lesser posts, would get anything like this level of coverage. I see you have an interest in quantifying the number of footnotes. Is it documented that nine is or isn't "enough to clear that bar"? Normally three is fine for a new Wikipedia article. I see the argument that three is not enough for a losing candidate, whose posited notability is mainly associated with a notable election. But 50 for Ossoff or 160 for O'Donnell suggests those should be pruned for readability, not that 9 is too few. Is it your view that counting footnotes is the way this should be wikilawyered, and that the importance of the publication (e.g. Wash Post) or of the claim ("best candidate") should be set aside? (As I've indicated above, it seems to me the claim of "best" and the importance of the publications citing this character, and the number of times, accomplishes notability and a long conversation is not a good use of our time.) -- econterms (talk) 20:00, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The point is that every candidate in any election, without exception, could always show nine sources — but the standard that an unelected candidate for office has to meet is that the sourcing shows their candidacy to be significantly more notable than the norm for unelected candidates, and that's not being shown by simply citing the same number of sources that any other candidate in any other election could always show. Bearcat (talk) 21:13, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Considering the arguments given here I think I will Oppose Merger. While some information from the Parnell article can be seamlessly integrated into here, I think readers would be better served by having a separate article on the candidate who, as Econterms has pointed out, has received nonroutine media coverage. The content of the coverage matters more than raw number of footnotes. --HighFlyingFish (talk) 20:45, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
