San Diego Politics Blog

This blog has been told by 2 different individuals that Alan Uke has stopped investing money into tv and radio commercials.  If this is true, it would mean that Uke has essentially thrown in the towel and given up on this race.  The presence of Republican candidate Eric Roach in the race apparently marked the end of Uke’s candidacy.  Uke’s decision to halt campaign spending comes after private polls showed him failing to catch on with voters.  Today, the poll by Competitive Edge Research confirmed that Uke has not gotten much of a boost from the several hundred thousand dollars he spent.

Other reports coming into this blog are that some conservative activists in the area are asking State Senator Bill Morrow to drop out of the race and throw his backing to one of the other conservative candidates, either Eric Roach or Howard Kaloogian.

The belief among an increasing number of conservatives is that Roach, Kaloogian and Morrow have split up the conservative vote allowing Bilbray to poll in the top slot.  But, with the top candidates all relatively close together a lot can change at a moment’s notice.

A new poll has been released on the race for the 50th Congressional District and it’s making its way through political circles.  This blog has been sent the poll from several different individuals with different motivations.  And many of the poll results have been posted by Duane Dichiara who blogs for www.flashreport.org

There are a number of interesting highlights from the poll that follow up on the Datamar poll released a couple months ago.

1) In the open primary race Democrat Francine Busby is standing exactly where observers had predicted, namely in first place.  She has 33.5% to Republican Brian Bilbray’s 14.8% with Republicans Eric Roach and Howard Kaloogian neck-and-neck for 2nd in the GOP field (7.9% and 7.1% respectively).  All the other candidates are below 5%.  This poll shows Bilbray maintains a base of support and strong name ID in the district, but what happened to Bill Morrow?  It seems Roach and Kaloogian have taken the Morrow vote for themselves and Morrow is not much of a factor in this race according to the poll.  The same can be said for Alan Uke, Richard Earnest, Bill Hauf and the others. 

2) Certainly alot can change in the next month, but San Diegans have started gravitating towards candidates they really like.  Among candidates with the highest "Very Favorable" percentages are Busby (21.7%), Bilbray (13.1%), Kaloogian (9.5%), Roach (6.5%) and then Morrow (5.7%).  Everyone else is below 5%. 

3) Perhaps most interesting, in the head-to-head matchups, Francine Busby does what many Democrats had predicted:  she beats a lot of the Republicans.  It’s still very early, but Democrats have to feel good that Busby runs about even with Bilbray and Roach and ahead of everyone else.  Versus the more moderate former mayor of Del Mar, Richard Earnest, Busby runs an astonishing 25 points ahead!

But for now this race is about who will get the chance to face Busby.  And if these poll numbers are accurate, it’s shaping up to be a Bilbray-Roach-Kaloogian slugfest!