* We have two relatively recent polls from Democrat Debbie Halvorson and Republican Martin Ozinga in the 11th Congressional District contest.
* The Halvorson poll is slightly older. Taken September 14-16 of 500 likely voters, Halvorson’s poll shows her leading 43-35.
* Ozinga’s poll is more recent - Sept. 17-18 vs 14-16 - but the survey sample size is smaller - 400 likely voters vs. 500 likelies. It’s impossible to discern how each campaign is defining “likely” voters in their screens, so that could be one reason for the discrepancy. Ozinga claims Halvorson’s lead is just two points - 38-36.
* Judy Baar Topinka actually won the 11th District two years ago 50.3 to 49.7 by almost exactly a thousand votes over Rod Blagojevich. Considering she lost the state by about ten points, that’s pretty good for the GOPs. The following will give you an idea of how closely divided the district is. From the Halvorson pollster’s analysis…
The generic ballot in this district is virtually even (38% Democrat / 40% Republican). Those numbers are better than you’d expect in a Republican-held district
* From the Ozinga polling memo…
The Presidential ballot underscores the competitive nature of this district.
The Presidential ballot is a statistical tie (44% McCain/43% Obama) in an open seat district in Obama’s home state.
* And here’s some back and forth on TV messaging. From Halvorson…
Halvorson’s television buy is doing a good job of expanding her personal popularity, but she needs the resources to sustain it. She currently receives a 38% favorable / 20% unfavorable rating – an increase of 14 points in her favorable rating since May. While Halvorson’s ratio of favorables to unfavorables is nearly 2:1, Ozinga’s unfavorable rating is nearly as high as his favorable rating (28% favorable / 22% unfavorable).
* Ozinga…
Despite significant spending on the part of the Halvorson campaign, Debbie Halvorson holds a tenuous two point lead on the ballot (36% Ozinga/38% Halvorson). This represents a net 15 point improvement for Ozinga since our April survey (26% Ozinga/43% Halvorson) and a net five point improvement since August (33% Ozinga/40% Halvorson).
* Halvorson’s slightly earlier poll showed no movement…
Halvorson has maintained her vote share since May (43% Halvorson / 32% Ozinga). The small amount of movement in Ozinga’s vote is within the poll’s margin of error, in spite of his strong spending on television ads (more than $400,000) and his extensive direct mail
program, which has included more than ten pieces and has been heavily negative.
* Ozinga’s poll did show movement. Lots of it…
Since April, Halvorson has dropped five points (43% to 38%) and Ozinga has climbed ten (26% to 36%). In addition, John McCain is holding his own in IL-11, despite Obama’s favorite son status in Illinois.
* Halvorson’s poll included the Green Party candidate…
Halvorson leads Ozinga by a 43% to 35% margin, with Green Party candidate Jason Wallace at 6%.
* There was no reference to Wallace in the Ozinga press release, but Gov. Blagojevich rated a mention…
Halvorson’s negative attacks on Marty Ozinga have not improved her ballot numbers and have instead reinforced her image as a typical politician who is inexorably tied to the incredibly unpopular Rod Blagojevich (15% fav/72% unfav).
* Halvorson poll methodology…
Anzalone Liszt Research conducted n=500 live telephone interviews with likely 2008 general election voters in Illinois CD-11. Interviews were conducted between September 14-16, 2008. Respondents were selected at random with interviews apportioned geographically based on expected voter turnout. Expected margin of sampling error is ±4.4% with a 95% confidence level.
* Ozinga poll methodology…
Public Opinion Strategies conducted a telephone survey among 400 likely voters in Illinois’ 11th Congressional District. The survey was conducted September 17-18, 2008 and has a margin of error of +4.9% in 95 out of 100 cases.
*** UPDATE 3 *** Our very own Kevin Fanning caught up with Treasurer Giannoulias, an Obama protege, and asked him about the McCain ad flap…
“One of the things that keep people out of politics is sleaze and mud-slinging. I experienced this when I ran, with people trying to make my family look dirty. I’m biased because I’m a friend of Barack Obama, but I thought the ad was ridiculous. It never mentioned what Daley did for Obama, I’m pretty sure it just said something like Bill Daley, brother of Mayor Daley. I actually spoke to Bill Daley this morning, and he told me that John McCain actually helped him become Commerce Secretary. The ad also mentioned something about Barack being responsible for Governor Blagojevich’s failure to lead. Everyone in Illinois knows that is ludicrous. “
In response to a recent ad from the McCain For President campaign, Mayor Richard Daley said Tuesday that “people are desperate.” […]
At an unrelated event on Tuesday, Daley said, “If people throw mud, it comes back in their face.”
The mayor suggested that perhaps there should be more talk of the Keating Five investigation in the early ’90s — which included Sen. John McCain. It was, in Daley’s words, “… the biggest example of greed … as so many lost their homes.”
*** UPDATE 1 *** Bill Daley takes another whack at McCain via CNN…
Daley accused McCain of hypocrisy for attacking Obama on lobbyists: “When I was at [telecom company] SBC, I had to hire [McCain campaign manager] Rick Davis to see John McCain,” he said. “He wouldn’t see anyone unless you hired one of his lobbyist friends. Telecom was his and Rick Davis was his telecom lobbyist. That was in ‘02, ‘03, ‘04.”
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* Bill Daley has been drawn into the Obama-McCain presidential contest, and it appears that McCain goofed in his TV ad, whether deliberately or not. I posted the ad yesterday, but here it is again…
Daley’s son, William Daley Jr., is a former lobbyist for Fannie Mae. Daley Jr. is now with Morgan Stanley, and he is registered with Cook County and the State of Illinois as a lobbyist for the firm.
“The whole thing is an outright lie,” said Daley, who is furious with a new anti-Barack Obama ad released by the John McCain campaign that focuses on Chicago’s shady politics and its political machine. […]
Quoth Daley: McCain “cuts an ad making it look like I’m a thief and a gangster like Rezko” — that would be Tony Rezko, the former campaign fund-raiser for Obama and Gov. Blagojevich who was convicted on federal charges in June.
Added Daley: “The ad claims I’m a lobbyist. I’ve never been a lobbyist! My son, Bill, was a lobbyist five years ago. I don’t know what they’re talking about,” Daley told Sneed.
“A year and a half ago, he [McCain] called me the greatest U.S. commerce secretary ever, at a conference being held at Deer Valley,” Daley said. “I certainly thought he was being extreme, but he even voted for my confirmation as U.S. commerce secretary when he was chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee!” […]
“This past March, I even went over to visit McCain at his Hilton Hotel fund-raiser — and walked away with an autographed picture!” […]
Daley, who is identified as Obama’s economic adviser, is furious with being associated with Rezko, described in the ad as a convicted felon — and Obama’s patron and money man. Furthermore, he’s included in a list that describes Blagojevich as having a legacy of federal and state investigations.
But the suggestion that Obama is a politician in the classic Chicago mold is way off base. He wasn’t a machine candidate in his bid for the Illinois Senate in 1996, and he won the 2004 nomination for the U.S. Senate seat in a heavily contested primary without Daley’s support. Though he now enjoys the support of establishment Democrats, Obama is a man governed by his conscience, not by his associations.
Obama wasn’t “born of the corrupt Chicago political machine,” and that makes his rise all the more remarkable. But the McCain camp is betting voters know less about Obama than they think they know about Chicago, which can usually be summed up in three words: Dead people vote.
Chicago, regrettably, deserves that rap. Obama does not.
The Chicago Machine concept is one that Republicans in Illinois had long urged the McCain campaign to tell the nation, noting the dysfunction of Democratic-controlled Illinois government. Yet it also is a premise that McCain draws overly broadly in the ad and one that risks confusing voters unfamiliar with the day-to-day players in Chicago politics.
The Obama campaign had anticipated the Chicago Machine card would be played in the campaign and the candidate, himself, noted earlier this year that he felt he had done well in rising politically “without being entangled in some of the traditional problems of Chicago politics.” […]
Obama has worked to distance himself from Blagojevich and notably invited three potential challengers to the governor’s possible 2010 re-election bid to speak at the recent Democratic National Convention. But Obama also has said little about the Blagojevich-led Democratic debacle in Springfield that has largely kept state government in a stalemate.
Obama was not spawned by a Chicago “machine” ward organization. His Hyde Park-Kenwood community is one of the few “independent” outposts in the city. In his early political career, as a state senator, Obama steered clear of local entanglements. He ran and lost a U.S. House race without Mayor Daley’s backing.
The remnants of the Daley machine — a confederation of political families — the best known named Madigan, Lipinski and Hynes — did not back Obama in his U.S. Senate Democratic primary bid, though he did have as his top consultant David Axelrod, Mayor Daley’s key adviser.
As a U.S. senator, Obama rarely used his popularity to force change in the local culture of corruption.
This John McCain ad is mostly accurate and largely pointless.
The one serious distortion is in claiming that Barack Obama was “born” of the Chicago machine. Obama was actually an independent outsider who challenged the party establishment, both in running for the Illinois Senate and in unsuccessfully opposing U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush. Obama did use hardball tactics on occasion but was not embraced by the party apparatus until later in his career.
Three of the four names included here do no damage to the senator from Illinois and serve mainly to reinforce the impression that Obama swims with sharks. Bill Daley may be a lobbyist and the brother of Mayor Richard Daley, but he is a former commerce secretary with a solid reputation. State Sen. Emil Jones gave Obama a boost early in his career, in part by assigning him to shepherd ethics legislation through the legislature. Obama has no connection to allegations that Jones has helped some of his own family members on the state payroll. And while Blagojevich is Obama’s governor — indeed, he is the governor of Oprah Winfrey and Mike Ditka and every other Illinois resident — he and Obama are not close politically.
Rezko is the exception, a major albatross for Obama. He was a key fundraiser for Obama and sold him a patch of land adjacent to Obama’s home — a deal that the Democratic nominee has called a “boneheaded mistake.” But the Chicago businessman, who was convicted of corruption charges in June, was not under investigation at the time of these dealings.
While the ad is a stretch, McCain is trying to tie Obama to the specter of ethically challenged big-city machine politics, undoubtedly hoping the word “Chicago” will turn off suburban and rural voters.
