The latest Chicago Tribune
poll appears to track closely with recent polls conducted by two Republican
statewide contenders.
The Tribune poll found
Judy Baar Topinka leading the GOP governor's race with 38 percent, followed by
Jim Oberweis at 17 percent, Ron Gidwitz finally breaking into double-digits
with 11 percent and Bill Brady bringing up the rear at 8 percent. 25 percent
were undecided.
That matches up pretty
well with polls conducted by two GOP gubernatorial candidates whose campaigns
shared their results last week on the condition that the numbers not be
revealed.
Topinka and Gidwitz were
the biggest gainers from the last Tribune poll in October, both of them picking
up 7 points. Gidwitz has almost tripled his October numbers, but he has spent
millions of dollars on TV ads in the process. Topinka has done little actual
campaigning since October, but the word has had time to get out to
"regular" Republicans that she is the organizational choice. Oberweis
picked up two points and Brady picked up one.
The results could be
looked at as a call for Gidwitz and Oberweis to go negative on Topinka, but
that move can carry a big risk.
Topinka and Oberweis are
evenly splitting "very conservative voters," according to the
Tribune. About the only way for Oberweis to let those voters know he's one of
them and Topinka isn't would be to run so-called "comparative" ads
that are usually highly negative in tone.
If the moderate Gidwitz
allows fellow moderate Topinka to hover around 40 percent for long, he'll never
pick up enough votes to win. Yes, Gidwitz's numbers are going up, but it's been
like spending a fortune to budge the Titanic a foot off the ocean floor.
Word from inside is that
the Gidwitz and Oberweis campaigns have been strongly urging each other for
days through an e-mail exchange to start the attacks on Topinka, but neither
side is apparently willing to do so yet. Gidwitz, like many political
neophytes, is reportedly very reluctant to get down and dirty. Oberweis is
already viewed negatively for his infamous 2004 "black helicopter"
ads, and probably doesn't want to suffer the consequences of being the first to
pull the trigger against Topinka.
Candidates who attack
usually succeed in driving down their opponents' numbers, but those newly
disaffected voters don't immediately (or ever) gravitate towards the negative campaigner.
However, voters who buy
into negative attacks often either head temporarily into the undecided column
or, if it's a crowded field, choose a different candidate. The most famous
instance of this was the 1992 Democratic US Senate primary when Al Hofeld's
well-funded negative assault on Alan Dixon drove voters into Carol
Moseley-Braun's camp. Negative campaigns also usually at least temporarily
drive down the numbers of those running the ads.
Oberweis seems most intent
for now on keeping fellow social conservative Bill Brady as near to zero as
possible, or getting him out of the race once and for all. Brady has aggravated
Oberweis to no end by using a direct mail campaign to paint the dairy magnate
as a flip-flopper. Brady appears to be hoping to deprive Oberweis of
conservative votes so that he can then consolidate his position and move into
second place, and pray that enough late money pours in to fund the drive to the
finish line. If Oberweis attacks Topinka, it's possible that voters might head
to Brady.
For now, though, Brady
just doesn't have the funds to compete, at least that we know of. His first TV
ad was very good, but there were so few ratings points behind it that nobody
saw it enough to do Brady any good. Word is Brady just bought ads on Chicago
cable TV. Total buy: $5,000. Jim Oberweis spends more than that handing out
free ice cream every day.
Meanwhile, the Tribune
poll found that if Edwin Eisendrath could put together a real campaign he might
make it at least a somewhat respectable race. Just 52 percent of Democrats want
to see Rod Blagojevich reelected, according to the poll. Just 42 percent of
Democrats thought the state was heading in the right direction, while 38
percent chose wrong direction. But Eisendrath hasn't spent any money, got in
way too late, struggled for weeks just to find a downstate coordinator, and now
trails Blagojevich 62-18.
The line on Eisendrath is
that a Blagojevich indictment would sweep him to victory. He may need a
conviction.
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Rich Miller also publishes
Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter. He can be reached at
thecapitolfaxblog.com.