New SUSA Poll: Hayworth up by 12

A new SurveyUSA poll has J.D. Hayworth leading Harry Mitchell by 12 points.

Hayworth: 52%
Mitchell: 40%
Severin: 4%
Undecided: 4%

590 Likely Voters, MoE 4.1%

As Craig at Random Musings has pointed out, the GOP holds a 17% advantage in registered voters. It is encouraging to see Harry cutting into that since only 84% of Republicans are planning on voting for J.D.

However, I find this poll discouraging. The last SUSA poll had Hayworth at 50% with only a five point lead. And Harry is pulling in only 83% of Democrats.

This race is still winnable. The poll proves that Hayworth is not that popular in the district. He has been hovering around 50% for several months now and that is never good for an incumbent. Harry and the campaign have been walking almost everyday in Scottsdale and Tempe. Driving through Tempe neighborhoods, you can see that people are excited for Mitchell with lawn signs all over the place and no love for J.D. in sight.

I think this race will tighten up once the DCCC puts out the ad buy and Harry gets his message out to all the channel surfers. At this point, volunteers are crucial. Get out there and do some walking. Reserve just an hour to do some phone-banking. And if you can't volunteer, contribute.

Go Harry!

Update: Daily Kos poster RBH has the party ID breakdown of the SUSA poll:

52R/28D/19I

AZ-05 actually breaks like this: 44R/28D/27I

I agree with RBH. They oversampled Republicans and this race is closer than it looks. I withdraw my "discourging" remark.

GIVE 'EM HELL, HARRY!!

Update #2: I was looking over the details of this SUSA poll and I'm shocked. Generation Y voters break for J.D. 76%. Harry's support from women is in the low 40's. Hayworth is winning the Hispanic vote! Either something is seriously wrong with this poll or I just don't get it. Can someone with more knowledge on polls and statistics help us out?

Truth Watch

The Mitchell campaign has launched TruthWatch, a website dedicated to calling J.D. out on his lies and refuting them with facts and reality (something Republicans just can't deal with). Check on it frequently since J.D. isn't exactly habitual when it comes to telling the truth. The exact opposite can be said about his dishonesty.

Harry and J.D. were at a candidate forum today, along with gubernatorial candidates and others. I wasn't able to attend, but I have some friends in the Young Democrats who did. I will get all the juicy details as soon as I can.

Check Harry's website for future campaign events, there are a bunch planned. They are doing canvassing almost every day during the week and phone-banking as well. Get out there, only 50+ days until the election!

Primary Results

The numbers don't really give us much to go on since both candidates were uncontested. Democratic turnout around the state seems low to me (this is speculation, I don't have any stats and I don't expect that really to be the case in CD-8). Then again, the only statewide Democratic primary was for the School Superintendent job (with Jason Williams upsetting Slade Mead). Over a quarter of a million Republicans voted to nominate a gubernatorial candidate so their numbers were much larger this primary than Democrats. Therefore, I wouldn't worry about fears that Mitchell's base is much smaller than J.D.'s. Hayworth's people came out today to choose a governor.

So, here are the numbers:

Hayworth: 30,376

Mitchell: 18,218

Unrelated-to-CD-05-Note: I also wanted to add that Ed Ableser and David Schapira won the primary for District 17 State House race. Ed is a great guy, I have walked for him twice and he will continue to serve us well in the Legislature. I don't know much about Schapira. I was rooting for Rhett Wilson (no relation) and his loss was a disappointment. Rhett was a great candidate who was actively engaged with people at ASU and knew the troubles students go through with tuition, gas prices, and relations with Tempe (especially for renters and commuters). I still see a bright future for him in Arizona politics.

Other than that, Len Munsil will be the next unsuccessful GOP nominee for the governor's seat and Gabrielle Giffords will be CD-08's next Congresswoman.

I'm off to bed, happy Primary night everyone!

Primary Day is Tomorrow!

Don't forget to vote!

This is an open thread.

More From Team Red-Handed

Carolyn from MoveOn sent me another YouTube movie Team Red-Handed made. J.D. spoke at a Bikers Against Illegal Immigration rally (I guess the biker vote is quite a constituency) and the Team was out in full force. Check it out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCBHdlT2xvw

Note: I have been trying to configure my YouTube account so I can put the videos directly on the blog. So far, it has been giving me grief. Check back in a few days and I should have the problem fixed then.

Later!

"I'm Not A Rubberstamp"

J.D. uttered those words at the close of last night's debate. "I'm not a rubberstamp, I'm a representative. [...] I will make the difference in Washington for the better."

During the debate, Hayworth made it no secret that he strongly disagrees with the President on immigration. He despises Bush's position. Among Republicans, he is an extremist on immigration, joining the likes of Tom Tancredo and Pat Buchanan. Yet to J.D., immigration is all that matters. Putting a stop to illegal and legal immigration is his self-described goal in Congress.

I guess to Representative Hayworth that means he's not a Bush Rubberstamp. No, to him he is a rebel because on one issue he is so far to the right. As the Mitchell camp pointed out last week, it is no surprise the GOP is running from hardliners like J.D. The Republican Party even went so far to endorse a candidate in a competitive primary so the immigration extremist (Graf) *hopefully* won't win. I love seeing the Republicans so conflicted that they would flip the bird to a sizable portion of their anti-brown people base in order to retain a Congressional seat. Ah, politics in an election year!

So back to Hayworth saying he is not a rubberstamp. Looking over his record, I find it hard to believe J.D. when he says he is not a rubberstamp. What major Bush legislation did he oppose? In the first minute of the debate he touted his support and votes for the Medicare Part D plan and No Child Left Behind. Two huge pieces of Bush legislation that are failures. No Child Left Behind is now an oxymoron, an unfunded one at that! The Medicare Part D plan is confusing, overly bureaucratic, and the legislation was one step towards the death of Medicare.

It looks like J.D. likes to point to the P.R. pieces the Bush Administration shot through Congress, failed to fund properly, and then touted as accomplishments. He is proud he put his vote behind those bills. He is proud of being a rubberstamp.

But he's not a rubberstamp because he's the immigration rebel. It's that one issue that seperates J.D. from other Bush Rubberstamps. Let us all be thankful that J.D. is on the wrong side of Bush on this one.

The Great Debate

Okay, so it wasn't all that great. The debate was not held in front of an audience and was kept to a short 20 minutes. Only three subjects were tackled by the candidates: immigration, Iraq, and stem cell research. Honestly, I was expecting an exciting, lively debate. What I saw was Harry Mitchell and J.D. Hayworth basically quoting and trading past press release barbs.

And that's not really that big of a deal. The debate was held in front of no audience and aired on PBS so most voters of District 5 didn't see it and the news coverage will echo previous articles. There was no precedent for this debate and it was J.D.'s first in almost a decade.

I would say, however, that the framing of the debate and its questions favored Hayworth. Hayworth, being a former news commentator, was comfortable and relatively at ease without a live audience and spoke directly to the camera most of the time. The questions were not hard-hitting and the ethics question never came up (which I was sad to see, Harry definitely should have mentioned J.D.'s ties to Abramoff). Others have already mentioned that Harry's experience in politics put him amongst people and persuading live bodies. Harry might have been a bit nervous going up against a 12-year Congressional incumbent, but he held his own quite well.

Harry slammed J.D. for getting nothing done in Congress for 12 years and for allowing illegal immigration to get worse. He reminded voters that Hayworth's positions are out of the mainstream, even in his own party. J.D. kept to his usual rhetoric, which sounds good and appealing to the average voter. He stumped Mitchell by asking what country had a working guest-worker program (to which Harry didn't have an answer, only "it can work").

On Iraq, Mitchell denied support for a timetable for withdrawal. Instead, he advocated for a withdrawal plan based on accomplishments. He repeatedly said we need to work with the President and the military, but also that he would help keep the Administration accountable. I think Harry might be of the idea that President Bush is still popular in the district (something I doubt very, very much). Still, he position was better than Hayworth's. J.D.'s response basically boiled down to: we can't get out or the terrorists will swoop in and take over. He is obviously disconnected from reality and the facts in Iraq. Most of the violence there now is sectarian, not the result of the Sunni-insurgent attacks (although American lives continued to be lost fighting this insurgency).

The last section of the debate focused on stem cell research. No contest, Mitchell whooped on J.D. The Congressman falsely insinuated that adult stem cells were as good as embryonic. Talk to a biologist, J.D. He also touted "snowflake babies." Mitchell put the hammer down: "without stem cell research, most of those embryos or 'snowflake babies' would be destroyed anyway." That's the truth of it. When Bush vetoed stem cell research, he and those Republicans that agreed (like J.D.) basically said that destroying embryos for life-saving research was bad, but destroying them as medical waste was not.

I'll post more, but I have to get back to work. Later.

Harry Mitchell vs. J.D. Hayworth: The First Debate

This past Thursday J.D. Hayworth and Harry Mitchell squared off in a taped debate. I heard about it while phone-banking at the Tempe Democratic office this afternoon. The debate will be aired sometime this coming week on either PBS (Channel 8) or Channel 11. There was no audience. I'm guessing it was kept to the candidates and the moderator. When I find out when it will air, I will post it.

Update: I need to check the Horizon schedule from now on. The J.D. Hayworth and Harry Mitchell debate will be aired on Wednesday, September 6, at 7:00 P.M. on Channel 8. I'll definitely tune in. If anyone has the ability to YouTube this, please do!