Recently, I said that part of the challenge in my race for the U.S. Senate in New York is to expose my opponent's charade. Arianna's post yesterday on Bill Clinton's foray into Connecticut to help Joe Lieberman touches on my point and comes precisely at a time when a New York poll shows how out-of-step Hillary Clinton is with voters in New York.
I'm not poll-obsessed but the July 19th Marist poll does underscore what I've been saying throughout this campaign: if Democratic primary voters actually knew where my opponent stood on the Iraq War, she could lose the race. In the Marist poll, 70 percent of registered Democrats believe that the Iraq War should be a major campaign issue. And 62 percent of the voters say they will vote for a candidate who is against the war and only 9 percent say they will vote for someone who supports the war. This poll confirms Hillary Clinton's worst fear: while she is doing everything possible not to talk about the war, voters want to talk about the war--and the unnecessary deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, the destruction of a country and the waste of hundreds of billions of dollars--and they overwhelmingly reject her position on the war, and, I believe, on other issues.
Hillary Clinton is for the war. I oppose the war. Beyond the war, Hillary Clinton opposes single-payer health insurance, while I support single-payer health insurance (Medicare For All). Hillary Clinton says NAFTA was a good thing and recently voted for yet another so-called "free trade" agreement (with Oman), while I oppose so-called "free trade" because they favor corporations over workers. Hillary Clinton supports the death penalty and a bill to criminalize flag burning, while I oppose the death penalty and any bills that impinge on the First Amendment. Hillary Clinton encourages discrimination because she opposes same-sex marriage, while I support same-sex marriage because discrimination is unacceptable in our society.
The Marist poll also found that 13 percent of the voters say that they will vote for me in the primary. We're a bargain for voters: we've calculated that the Clinton campaign spent 30 times more than we have per percentage point of support. Clinton spent $22 million so far on her campaign (she has raised $42 million--thanks to a little help from Rupert Murdoch and Bush fundraiser Tom O'Gara) and got a 83% support rating and we've spent $120,000--which means for each percentage point in the poll, Clinton spent an estimated $277,000, while I spent only $9,000 per point. We are polling higher than Tom Suozzi, who is competing for the Democratic nomination for New York governor, runs the second-largest county in the state and, after spending $6.2 million polls just ten percent.
Lastly, it's worth comparing our poll numbers to another race. In the Quinnipiac University poll released on February 16, Sen. Joe Lieberman was leading his challenger Ned Lamont by 55 points: 68 to 13. In other words, Ned Lamont was polling at exactly the same number I am drawing today--even though he was spending a huge amount of money from his personal fortune of $200 million. In late April, the poll found Lieberman leading Lamont 65 percent to 19 percent. As we know today, that race is tied, with Lamont having spent $2.5 million of his own money.
Don't get me wrong. Getting from here to there is a huge task. My opponent has done a masterful job at obscuring where she stands. Her support is based largely on name recognition and celebrity. Our goal, and clearly our challenge moving forward, is to make it clear to voters in New York where the incumbent stands on the issues and, by comparison, where I stand on the issues--not an easy challenge given that money talks and we're at a huge financial disadvantage on that score.
But, in the end, poll numbers are less important to me than what I am hearing out in the street. For many weeks, I and hundreds of other volunteers throughout the state have been engaging voters on the issues. We have heard a great desire for a progressive, authentic message--one that calls for an immediate end to the war, for single-payer health insurance and a determined stance against abusive corporate power. Those are the issues I am running on and I believe are resonating with voters.