As aygart mentioned, you make it sound as if AS can control exactly how many votes he gets. They wanted to make sure they win and ran a successful campaign, no one knew he'll win with 9k votes.
Actually if you read what I wrote, obviously he and they could not control the amount, and they could not have foreseen the margins. However it seems that just looking at the numbers it was fairly obvious that unless there was a huge unexpected turn away from previous elections, AS would win comfortably and most likely in what could be termed a landslide, and would demonstrate the power of the Lakewood voting bloc in addition to the fact that it could not be taken for granted as Rep. but would switch to Dem. if the issues warranted and could be a kingmaker. Albeit not with the same margins as he actually got with all the noise and pushing, but still enough to meet that goal.
@YitzyS was saying that there was a push to drive up the margins as much as possible, seemingly even beyond just meeting those goals, and that seems borne out by the campaign. I was simply trying to understand why.