Meg Whitman’s campaign team is sounding confident thanks to several polls showing that the eBay founder is leading her Republican rival, Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, in the party’s June 8 primary to pick a nominee for governor in California.
Team Whitman’s senior strategist Mike Murphy and senior adviser Jeff Randle told reporters today that a new internal poll of 600 primary voters done by campaign pollster John McLaughlin has Whitman leading Poizner 53-27. Read the campaign’s memo about the poll here. The campaign saw a tightening when Poizner went after Whitman with a negative ad campaign, with one SurveyUSA poll even putting the Republicans within two points of one another. Murphy said their internals were never that close. But now several polls have her holding a more than 20-point lead. It’s “quite a comeback,” Murphy told reporters on a conference call. He said they take nothing for granted but already are looking to the general election versus all-but-certain Democratic nominee Attorney General Jerry Brown.
The TPM Poll Average of this race has Whitman leading Poizner 45.0 to 35.3 percent. There also is a competitive Republican primary for the Senate nomination to challenge Sen. Barbara Boxer (D), so turnout is likely to be higher on the GOP side than it has been in recent years.
The strong position has allowed Whitman to focus on ground game to organize absentee primary voting which started May 10, and for voter turnout this fall should she beat Poizner. Team Whitman claimed 19,646 volunteers in the state who will be able to make 1 million calls by primary day.
The campaign aides said Whitman’s large ad buy featuring soft spots showcasing the executive in a positive light have helped to “unconfuse” voters who were inundated with Poizner’s negative ads. They said Poizner has ceded the Bay Area by stopping a planned television buy in the San Francisco media market, which is home to one in 7 of the Republican voters who historically vote in primary elections.
They said Poizner is a “guaranteed loser” against Brown, who also is former mayor of Oakland and the former governor. We’ve asked Team Poizner for a response.
One part of Whitman’s general election strategy will be to portray Brown as someone tied to “powerful liberal special interests,” and to say he’s too entrenched in the Sacramento political system, Whitman’s aides said. They described Brown as the “alpha male dog” in Sacramento. At the same time, they think he’s not used to the “rough-and-tumble” of today’s political campaigns.
Reporters asked why the campaign is doing robo calls and press events focusing on endorsements from former Vice President Dick Cheney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, given that California remains a blue state. The staffers didn’t say why they are using Cheney and Gingrich but did say Whitman would run a “Reaganesque” general election campaign to reach out to “everyone who wants change in Sacramento.” (Even though the current governor is a Republican.) Whitman also has former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice endorsing her in an ad that’s up on the airwaves.
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