Facebook
Twitter
RSS
Email Us
As the candidacy of former U.S. Rep. J. D. Hayworth continues to fade, a large number of Arizona Democrats remain undecided about which of their party’s four U.S. Senate candidates — three of whom didn’t enter the race until late April — is best suited to take on Republican John McCain in November.
According to a recent internal poll commissioned by labor organizer Randy Parraz — one of the four candidates seeking the Democratic nomination — former Tucson councilman Rodney Glassman holds a slight lead in the increasingly competitive August 24 primary.
Glassman, who has sunk a half million dollars of his own money into the campaign, was preferred by 20 percent of those surveyed while the 43-year-old Parraz, running strongest among the state’s large Latino population, was favored by 17 percent.
Glassman’s narrow lead is within the poll’s 5 percent margin of error.
Though vastly outspent by Glassman, veteran journalist John Dougherty has moved into third place and could be the surprise winner in the August 24 primary.
Former investigative journalist John Dougherty received 11 percent, while ex-state legislator Cathy Eden, a former head of the Arizona Department of Health Services who had been running second in the race, fell to 8 percent, according to the poll.
Dougherty was running dead-last a month ago.
Incredibly, a whopping 44 percent of Arizona Democrats remain undecided, so anything can happen.
According to the Parraz campaign, the automated telephone poll, conducted on August 9, surveyed 417 likely Democratic primary voters.
A Rasmussen Survey conducted in late July had Glassman leading with 15 percent, Eden at 11, Parraz at 10 percent and Dougherty bringing up the rear, polling 7 percent. At the time, nearly sixty percent of Arizona Democrats were undecided.
Despite raising considerably more money than any other Democrat in the race, Glassman, who was raised in a wealthy farming family in California’s San Joaquin Valley, has been unable to pull away from his three pesky rivals. He recently began running 30-second television spots in the Phoenix and Tucson markets.
According to his latest quarterly FEC filing, covering the period ending June 30, the former Tucson councilman had raised $1,094,404, compared to Eden’s $123,127. Parraz reported receipts of $53,964.
Investigative journalist John Dougherty, arguably the most progressive candidate in the field, reported raising $47,248, including a $19,100 personal loan to his campaign. Dougherty recently announced that he had purchased ad space on an electronic billboard near the heavily-traveled junction of Interstates 10 and 17 in Phoenix.
There’s little question that a Dougherty-McCain matchup would be one of the most interesting races in the country this fall. After all, it was Dougherty’s probing, in-depth stories in the Dayton Daily News in the late 1980s that first shed light on the infamous Keating Five scandal that nearly ended McCain’s political career.
With barely a week remaining in the contest, this is anybody’s race to win.
Winning Connections did no such poll. Did you or Dougherty’s people even bother to check with them? No, of course not. Par for the course for this “investigative reporter” who has relied on other peoples’ (wrong) information for the whole campaign. He has done no original investigating of his own. Makes one suspicious of everything he has ever written.
The Parraz people have pulled the wool over your eyes. But in the end, election night will tell the tale, with Dougherty and Parraz far behind Glassman and Eden.
You are burying the lead here. I have been watching this race from afar with real interest. From what I see, it is Parraz whose campaign has surged in the last three weeks and who remains the most viable progressive challenger to McCain. Nothing against Dougherty, but his campaign is not moving large blocks of voters–including excited NEW voters–the way Parraz is. The lack of enthusiasm for Glassman and Eden, despite the former having money, means most of the late undecideds will wither jump into Parraz or Dougherty’s campaign, or stay home. Parraz has a sizable lead and apparent skill advantage in organizing. He seems the one to watch.
Erin,
Thank you for your comment. Uncovered Politics spoke with John Jameson, the founder of Winning Connections, the award-winning, D.C.-based consulting firm, earlier this afternoon and he verified that his firm did not conduct the internal poll for the Parraz campaign initially referenced in this article. Apparently, that misinformation had been picked up by a number of Arizona-based bloggers and others in the past few days. We have corrected the story.
Incidentally, the source for this story was not provided by the Dougherty campaign, but rather by a statement published on the Parraz campaign web site on Friday, August 13.
Thanks again for the tip.
The fluid nature of the campaign shouldn’t obscure the fact that Glassman rushed traditional elements of the Democratic community to endorse him before anyone else was in the race. His record of concrete accomplishments is so weak, I wonder what they saw in him. I spoke with one labor organizer who said, “We can work well with Glassman,” but in fact they had never worked well with Glassman on any substantive issues or produced any meaningful accomplishments. (Glassman hasn’t ever held a workingman’s job, let alone one that might make him eligible to join a union, so what does he know about “labor”?)
A sad conclusion I’ve reached is that a lot of institutional AZ Democrats prefer to endorse a weak candidate because it’s easier to organize and raise funds with McCain in office. They mistakenly believe that a hostile Senator is better for raising the alarm and recruiting troops. After eight hostile years under Bush and two indecisive years under Obama, it’s easy to understand why they might feel this way.
But in fact, a strong AZ Democrat in the Senate would be a lynchpin of Democratic power in the 2010s and a real spur to both state and national organizing and fundraising. Let’s hope we get to test the theory.
Pingback: Arizona Democrats Face Off In Tight Senate Race | 100 Blog Strong
But why is it that everything is used by McCain as an excuse to extend tax cuts to rich people?
I’m really tired of his obsession with helping rich people get richer.