Within margin-of-error in July
A Public Opinion Strategies poll declares the WI-08
Congressional race between John Gard and Rep. Steve Kagen a
statistical dead-heat. Kagen leads Gard 46%-42% with a 4.9%
margin-of-error. Pollster
Gene Ulm [PDF] pointed out a few interesting tidbits from the
numbers:
- Undecided voters are "pre-disposted to vote against
Kagen."
- Sen. John McCain leads Sen. Barack Obama in the district
46%-41%.
- Gard has great name recognition before running ads.
This is great news for Gard on top of his
second quarter fundraising advantage over Kagen. Gard will be
able to raise plenty of money to be competitive, he has the name
recognition, and he's running in a district sympathetic to McCain
and Republicans. This is a race the GOP can and should win. Even if
you're no where near Wisconsin you can help out his campaign by
signing up for his
e-mail list and
donate to Gard's campaign. Nationalizing this race will give
Gard a much better chance to retake this normally-Republican
Congressional seat.
The Problem Here May Be The State
IJB July 18th, 2008 at 1:03 p.m. (link)
If current polls are to believed (and, personally, I'm not ready to believe them... yet), WI is poised to go heavily for Barry.
If it does, that could tip a potential take-back for us back into the D column.
That said, even if that does happen, Gard should come back again in two years - 2010 should be a lot more hospitable to GOP challengers than 2008.
Gard's time is now
Sean Hackbarth July 18th, 2008 at 1:55 p.m. (link)
McCain should do fine in WI-8. It doesn't possess the college towns like other areas of Wisconsin.
I can't imagine Gard trying a third time for the seat. He'd have the label of "damaged goods" on him.
Disclaimer: I work for the Senate Republican Conference.
www.theamericanmind.com
Gard ran in 2006
mzforrest July 18th, 2008 at 3:57 p.m. (link)
Name recognition won't mean anything for this rematch. Gard should have won the seat by 12-14 points in 2006. Of course, the gentleman he was replacing, Mark Green, should have out polled Governor Doyle in his race for governor too in his old district. Gard ran one of the poorer campaigns I've seen, and the coattails just weren't there as everyone expected.
Positively for Gard, Kagen is polling below 50%. Whoever said there wasn't a student population was mistaken. Lawrence University in Appleton, St. Norbert College, and UW-GB are 3 decent sized schools in the district. From a purely political perspective, what will hurt Gard again is the free trade stuff. There is a lot manufacturing in the Valley and GB, and the layoffs keep rolling in. Additionally, the Iraq War is not strongly supported in the district. Where Gard may see some benefit is people voting split ticket if they expect Obama to win the Presidency.