San Diego Politics Blog

10 News (via Survey USA) has a new poll out on the candidates for the 50th congressional district.  It asks about the favorable/unfavorable impressions voters have of the candidates.  Survey USA polled 900 registered voters in the 50th CD between March 18-19.  You can see the poll results here.

Busby, Bilbray, Kaloogian and Roach are again the frontrunners.  These candidates had favorable ratings of 20% or higher.

What’s interesting is that despite being a newcomer, Republican Eric Roach has a much higher unfavorable rating than Bilbray or Kaloogian.   Roach’s unfavorable rating of 24% is higher than Bilbray’s 20% and Kaloogian’s 18%.

Here are the numbers for the top contenders:

According to NPR’s political expert, Ken Rudin, the top candidates for the 50th are: Democrat Francine Busby, and Republicans Brian Bilbray, Bill Morrow, Howard Kaloogian and Eric Roach.

Also on the 11th: special election in California’s 50th CD (north San Diego) to replace former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R), who resigned following his conviction on bribery charges. The leading GOP candidates are former Rep. Brian Bilbray, state Sen. Bill Morrow, ex-state Rep. Howard Kaloogian, and businessman Eric Roach. The top candidates of each party advance to a June 6 general election. The likely Democratic nominee is Francine Busby, who lost to Cunningham in 2004.

They have coverage of the one-liners candidates used.  You can read their coverage of the "debate" here.

They said all the major candidates were there except Bill Morrow. 

The Flash Report’s Jon Fleischman has a report on a mailer that is reportedly being sent out to Republicans in the 50th congressional district. The mailpiece is authored by a group called the California Republican Assembly (CRA).

It’s a tough hit piece that attacks Bilbray for his work to fight off regulations on ephedra, which was the primary ingredient for the products marketed by Metabolife, which has been a major Bilbray donor.

It also ties Bilbray to scandal-plagued lobbyist, Jack Abramoff.

Read Jon’s report here.   See the piece directly here.

And a reader has posted a comment that there is a website to go along with this line of attack on Bilbray:  http://www.bilbraytheliberallobbyist.com/