From the Fletcher Campaign PLUS early reaction from the Twittersphere:
SAN DIEGO — In a recent scientific SurveyUSA poll conducted by 10News, Carl DeMaio and Nathan Fletcher finish essentially even, with Bob Filner close behind and Bonnie Dumanis farther back.
When compared to an identical SurveyUSA poll released 10 weeks ago, there were significant gains for Fletcher, who two weeks ago announced he was leaving the Republican Party and becoming an independent.
The San Diego Mayoral contest is non-partisan, and no party identifications appear on the ballot or in SurveyUSA’s polling. The overall poll shows that City Council Member DeMaio gets 28%, up 3 points from the previous poll; Fletcher, a state assemblyman, gets 26%, doubling his support from 13% in the previous poll.
The first poll, done in September 2011, showed Fletcher in last place. Filner, who represents California’s 51st Congressional District, gets 20%, down from 24%. San Diego County District Attorney Dumanis gets 13%, down a nominal point.
Four percent of likely voters said they will vote for another candidate, while 10% were undecided. Tonight, 10News will have reaction from political activist Carl Luna and candidate Nathan Fletcher on at 5 p.m. & 7 p.m.
Comments 17
Carl gets a bump and Fletcher peels votes away from Filner. It’s starting to look like Fletcher’s defection is not a GOP problem as the mainstream media suggests but a Democrat (Labor Union) one.
With Fletcher and DeMaio in a run-off we are at least guaranteed a Republican mayor.
In the next few weeks the #1 issue that Fletcher will continue to get drilled on will be his decision to leave the GOP. Anyone who is politically engaged enough to read Rostra knows his move was one for a tactical advantage. However, the average voter is being duped into thinking it was a move based on principals. As the media continues to dig into this and ask more specific questions, particularly in relation to the comments he made when trying to get the GOP endorsement, the average voter will see the undeniable fact that this entire maneuver was a charade to appear authentic when the reality is it’s a political move to get elected (exactly the type of “gaming” move he denounces in his video) and he’ll have a tough time appearing authentic. Ignoring the credibility of this survey (which I find highly suspect) this seems a lot like the presidential race when we saw a couple sporadic jumps from people who were way back (i.e. Herman Cain), only to fall just as fast as more attention was place on them.
Given that Fletcher obviously has “Crossed the Rubicon” with the GOP, and given that he has his sights set on Governor or perhaps President, he’ll eventually need a political party to join. The only one that makes sense for him is to eventually join is the Democrat Party. Kind of a “Scoop Jackson” Democrat.
You heard it first here.
Author
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Here is the link to Channel 10’s (KGTV) story on that Poll:
http://www.10news.com/news/30881187/detail.html
DeMaio…….. 28
Fletcher…… 26
Filner…….. 20
Dumanis……. 13
other……… 4
Undecided….. 10
An earlier poll about Fletcher’s party change is here:
http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=80dad540-fb0a-4698-bed6-d7d89e4cd949
Richard,
With California’s open-primary system, Fletcher probably wouldn’t need a Party to get elected Senator or Governor. President? That’s a different story.
Ya Know,
If it is a Fletcher-DeMaio run-off, we will have a Decline to State Mayor, not a Republican one.
Someone who declines to state they are a Republican is still a Republican. Especially when the only reason they decline to state it is for tactical, political reasons.
It’s totally a “hope and change” maneuver. He leaves the party and refuses to explain any specific reason why so now every voter can project whatever frustration they have with each political party as the reason he left. Just like everyone projected everything they hope for and all the changes they want onto Obama.
By definition, Fletcher is not a Republican.
He might (and probably does) have political views that match well with much of the Republican platform, but if he is not registered as a Republican, then he isn’t one.
Since the “Republican platform” contains a host of issues over which a city mayor has no control (abortion, Constitutional authority, universal healthcare, etc.), party affiliation should be moot, anyway.
That is the absurdity of this whole thing. It isn’t about the PARTY. It’s about the personal philosophy of the individual running for the office.
Too often the party is the problem—exacting commitments for the good of the party that are not for the good of the constituents you have been elected to serve. All you have to do is look at the way the state legislature operates to know this is true.
No, no, Alger, you are right.
Why would anyone question Nathan Fletcher’s loyalty and principles?
I wonder if he can actually say “decline to state” without chuckling though.
All “independents” give a boat load of cash to the Republican Party weeks before they are up for election against Republicans. It just makes sense.
Schwarzenegger is registered Republican. So is Ron Paul. But are they really! Republicans? BTW The latter might be a good VP choice for Romney if he wants to pick up independent votes.
Richard:
I won’t call you wrong, because you may well not be. However, Fletcher is positioning himself well to test a new strategy for the new CA political climate that has resulted from the combination of a jungle primary and Citizens United. Obviously, a jungle primary completely changes the equation for how to make a general election. Concurrently, the advent of Super PACs as a result of Citizens United may have the potential to break the monopoly on unlimited soft money “member communications” contributions that State and County Parties in CA have enjoyed for the last decade as a result of Prop 34 (I think that’s the number).
In sum, depending on what happens in this mayor’s race, and how functional Nathan’s Super PAC is, he may be able to run state-wide as an ind. with an Arnold-esque platform.
Sounds like Tony Krvaric’s bitterness goes up as his SD Republican registration numbers go down.
Hey, I can’t view your site properly within Opera, I actually hope you look into fixing this.
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From Admin: Well then, don’t use Opera. — Actually, who the heck even uses Opera as a browser?!
(OK, that was a spam comment, but like the doctor when told “It hurts when I do this,” responded with, “Well then, don’t do that,” we simply couldn’t resist.)