Jesse Kelly is back, and he’s polling.
The beaten Republican candidate who limped off to Texas after nearly toppling Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in 2010 released a poll today which showed him out front of the pack of probable Republican candidates for the special election to replace Giffords.
According to the survey, Kelly has a combined 35 percent of definite and leaning voters. State Senator Frank Antenori pulls 15 percent of definite and leaning voters, and local sports broadcaster Dave Sitton gets 7 percent.
The poll was conducted on the 24th and 25th of January, 2012 and sampled 300 likely primary voters from throughout the current Congressional District 8.
Republican state Sen. Frank Antenori, who is expected to announce his candidacy this week, said he has done his own polling for the seat — but he didn’t ask if voters supported Kelly because he didn’t think Kelly would run.
“What’s really astonishing is that he had no intentions of running in the normal election and he had already started cutting staff away, and all of a sudden Mr. opportunity is back in town,” Antenori said.
The special primary election for CD8 will be held in April, and a special general election to replace Giffords will be held in June. In November, the candidates would have to run again to keep the seat in a whole new district, the newly drawn CD2.
This article appears in Jan 26 – Feb 1, 2012.
Who conducted the poll? Margin of error? This looks like a total sham.
OoooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOO 300 voters. Wow. Who did he poll? Was it a blind, don’t tell us your party affiliation type poll or was it during an event at a shooting range?
give him, brewer and the teabaggers and give them their own country to run, far far away from us
Really bad news for Antentori. However, while we don’t know the methodology, 300 people is fairly standard for a congressional poll, and leaves you with a margin of about +/- 4.5%. So the number of people polled is fully legit.
Also, not sure this actually says anything about Sitton since he has almost no name ID at this point. This is going to be a very interesting race.
Also, Emmy Basch, this was a poll of likely Republican primary voters, and does not reflect on the general election, so a poll that didn’t weed out registered Democrats wouldn’t be accurate. The question is did they limit the poll geographically (for instance, to emphasize voters in the NW where Kelly has his most significant support), and did they poll INDs who are likely to vote in the Republican primary?
Lets NOT forget THIS gem from Jesse Kelly: http://j.mp/wJIPIR
You also have to remember that since no company or accompanying data was provided, that this poll is probably 100% MADE UP!!
Jesse Kelly ?
It’s odd to say, but it seems like the only reason Raul and Gabby won in the last election was they were running against McClung and Kelley.
It’s surprising the Republicans couldn’t find better or more experienced candidates.
All I ask of either party is that they provide some decent candidates.
Kelly didn’t “limp off to Texas.” According to Rick Stertz, he high-tailed it there to escape “death threats the FBI considered credible.” So, Kelly’s got some ‘splainin to do… unless you guys in the Tucson media don’t call him on it.
Kelly or Antenori………..both border crazy, raffle a fire arm weeks after Ms. Giffords was shot, right wing wackos.
In unrelated news Carmona will be the first Democrat I have ever voted for…
Steve, It’s funny you take issue with “limp off.” I heard the same complaint from the Kelly campaign, but for different reasons.
I have heard that FBI rumor, too. I asked John Ellinwood, Kelly’s campaign manager, and he said, as far as he knows, there were a few threats in the crazy days immediately after January 8 – but Kelly went to Texas for a job, and wasn’t ever under any kind of FBI special protection.
Ellinwood says the polling company is Telopinion, a Virginia-based Republican pollster, and that it was done through a live call of self identified likely primary voters. He wouldn’t turn the full results over, but said the sloppy presentation was because they were a little rushed. Margin of error is 5.5 percent.
Antenori says he did his own polling – in the future CD2 without Kelly’s name on the list – and he was doing much better than 15 percent.
Let the surveys and rumors begin.
Here is my comment. GO away and stay away. To elect Jesse Kelly would only put Arizona further into the dark ages of politics…stupid is as stupid does. He ran a very ugly vicious campaign against Gabby. Go away Jesse and stay away.
Jesse Kelly would be a MUCH better person to represent our district than Gabby Giffords. The man went 2 years without working while running for Congress last time only to lose by 3,000 votes. He went to Texas on a job assignment for his father’s company to put food on his table people. He did not run away from Tucson to get away from death threats. Heck let’s not forget Giffords has priot to the terrible shooting was living with her husband Mark Kelly in Houston more than she ever lived here in Tucson.
If the RINO’s Republican’s in Name Only…would NOT have left JK on an island for 3 weeks with no money following his destruction of their boy…Payton in the primary leading up to the general election again JK with no money to fight back Giffords attack ads and lies on TV about him.
JK would have won the seat hands down! He lost the early ballots because Payton supporters kept their money in their pockets instead of supporting the republican candidate that WON. JK destroyed Giffords on election day, but lost early ballots by 15K votes because he had NO MONEY to fight back on TV people. Plain and simple JK should be our Congressman now and will be in a couple of months is the inter-party fighting stops an they UNITE behind the 1 guy that can win this seat and SERVE our district well.
JW
Giffords ran one of the DIRTIEST campaigns ever run – – repeating lies upon lies about Jesse Kelly. She’s no angel and just maybe “what goes around, comes around.” People best go back and read about how she dissed Loughner at her Town Hall Meeting in 2007. She needs to stay in Texas and try to infiltrate their politics. If we can get rid of BOTH GRIJALVAS and DUMBNICK, maybe some peace will return to the city again. Until the hate mongers are gone, Tucson will continue to bear its awful reputation.
So y’all are basically claiming that Gabby was a liar when she and her staff said she returned to Tucson nearly every weekend? Riding down the Rillito seems a very Tucson thing to do…she’s in Houston for her rehab, but hey youre hoping she doesn’t heal too much it seems…
And oh right we’re supposed to think that poor Jesse had to work hard to put food on his table, yea right like Montana pops was going to let him starve, just like he worked for no pay, hello dads govt contracts again…the carpetbagger in the last election lost and he will again big time this go round…the dems are turning out this time,s the only reason it was as close as it was
I wouldn’t put too much stock in Jesse’s poll, especially when the campaign has declined to release any details of the poll other than the head-to-head numbers. Here’s a great article on Jesse’s poll that Sonoran Alliance put up http://bit.ly/xKiwcW
Kelly took his best shot and failed. He was philosophically strong in opposing the Big Government liberalism which has been steadily encroaching upon individual liberty and personal/community responsibility since Woodrow Wilson took his first swipes at the US Constitution, but had (and has) no record of accomplishment around which to rally.
Antenori is similarly strong and more accomplished.
Aside: Liberal faith in Big Government bureaucrats is perplexing. Like everyone else people in government care most about self-preservation, but they extract other people’s money in order to secure it. Lance that freaking boil and corruption will diminish.