Obscure GOP candidate for Senate breaks from the pack
A new U.S. Senate poll that shows a Republican hopeful leaping into a near dead heat for second place may say more about the state of the GOP than it does about little-known and underfinanced James P. Bradley.
While the poll by the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies found Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein on top with 28 percent support among likely voters, Bradley, a Laguna Niguel (Orange County) businessman, moved into third at 10 percent, just a tick behind Democratic state Sen. Kevin de León’s 11 percent.
“Why Bradley and not the other 10 Republicans running for Senate?” asked Mark DiCamillo, the poll’s director. “That’s the big question.”
There might be an easy answer.
Since the poll was conducted online, it could include the list of all 32 candidates for Senate, rather than the much smaller number of selected front-runners used in telephone polls.
The candidates were listed in alphabetical order, and Bradley was second on the list of 11 GOP contestants.
And the first Republican on that list? Arun K. Bhumitra, a teacher/ engineer/businessman from Torrance (Los Angeles County).
Neither Bhumitra nor any GOP candidate other than Bradley received much more than 2 percent in the poll, suggesting that people looking to vote Republican just picked someone with a name they liked from high on the list.
DiCamillo doesn’t see it that way, arguing that there’s no evidence of an “ordering effect” in the polling, since the first five names listed were all Republicans and that only one of them received significant support.
Bradley, who is running on a President Trump-style “America First” platform, has not even been a blip in previous polls. So far, he hasn’t collected the $5,000 in contributions that would require him to file a financial statement with the Federal Election Commission.
The long list of Senate candidates might have been intimidating to voters who haven’t paid much attention to the contest, DiCamillo said. That probably would include plenty of Republicans, because the party hasn’t been able to recruit a big-name candidate for the race.
“I thought going in that Republican voters would naturally gravitate toward the 11 Republicans,” said DiCamillo, who noted that 43 percent of GOP voters remain undecided. “But I thought they would divide the vote.”
They didn’t, which gives Bradley at least a moment in the political sun.
The poll is based on an online survey of 1,738 likely voters, taken April 16-22. The margin of error for the poll is plus or minus four percentage points. — John Wildermuth Fight for second: Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom remains comfortably ahead in the June 5 primary race for governor, according to a new poll, but a pair of Republicans, businessman John Cox and Orange County Assemblyman Travis Allen, now are in a dogfight for second place and a spot on the November ballot.
“The whole race is boiling down to a contest for second place,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the poll for the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies.
Newsom has seen his numbers rise from 26 percent in the institute’s December poll to 30 percent in the new survey. But the two Republicans made the biggest jump, with Cox now second at 18 percent and Allen third at 16 percent. Both were at 9 percent in December.
Republican voters seem to be moving to those two GOP contenders, DiCamillo said. While 36 percent of likely Republican voters were undecided in December, that’s now 11 percent.
The new poll is terrible news for Democrat Antonio Villaraigosa, former mayor of Los Angeles. Since December, he’s dropped from second place at 16 percent to fourth place at 9 percent. He’s also the only major candidate for governor with more likely voters viewing him unfavorably (36 percent) than favorably (27 percent).
“Most of Villaraigosa’s decline has come from Democrats,” DiCamillo said. In the December poll, Villaraigosa trailed Newsom among Democrats, 38 to 26 percent. But that gap has widened dramatically in the latest survey, with 51 percent of likely Democratic voters backing Newsom, compared with 14 percent for Villaraigosa.
Villaraigosa’s team shrugged off the poll numbers.
“Another poll this week showed the race — Newsom 21 and Villaraigosa 18 — nearly tied for first,” said Luis Vizcaino ,a spokesman for the former L.A. mayor. “The polls bounce around.”
The poll found Democrat state Treasurer John Chiang at 7 percent and Democrat Delaine Eastin, former state schools chief, at 4 percent.
The poll is based on an online survey of 1,738 likely voters, taken April 16-22. The margin of error for the poll is plus or minus four percentage points. — John Wildermuth Chiang makes a move: State Treasurer John Chiang, a Democratic candidate for governor, dropped his first statewide TV ad Thursday, painting himself as the man who “made the tough calls. And brought California back from the brink of financial disaster because you trusted me to manage our economy.”
Chiang is referring to financial decisions he made during the recession that prevented the state’s credit rating from tanking. He’s using this 30-second spot titled “Quiet Storm” to try to make his series of lowprofile but important statewide jobs — he has served as treasurer, controller and a member of the Board of Equalization — sound a bit sexier in a race where he is competing against two candidates who led big cities, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.
Chiang is hoping those explanations sink in fast, because he remains stalled in the polls, clocking in with only 7 percent of the vote in a survey released Thursday by the nonpartisan Berkeley IGS Poll.
Chiang supporters say they expect him to move in the polls once the ads start airing. This is a six-figure ad buy, compared with the sevenfigure buys recently from pro-Newsom and pro-Villaraigosa camps. Could be a start. — Joe Garofoli