Hyphen-lady has less Republican support than Smither

So I guess the Republicans have given up on their worthless candidate adrift in TX CD-22.

From Bob Smither’s website:

The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) is essentially writing off its write-in campaign for Texas’ 22nd District. Earlier this week the NRCC, which is the official congressional committee of the national Republican Party, released its “Final Push List” for targeted congressional campaigns in the United States. The list was circulated to Republican congressional officials and lobbyists, urging a last minute push to fund 33 targeted races that are seen as “winnable” by the national Republican Party.

Hyphen-lady doesn’t have jack at this point. Smither? He’s just getting started. Let’s help him become the leading candidate in the polls.

posted Oct 29th, 2006 by Stuart Richards
  • http://www.bloodymarybreakfast.blogspot.com Brock

    Anything on today’s rally with Barr?

  • Stuart Richards

    Haven’t seen anything yet. We’ll post something up, I’m sure, as soon as we hear. :)

  • http://www.PatDixon.org Patrick Dixon

    In regards to yesterday’s Bob Smither rally, I drove in from Austin as one of the speakers. The location was great and I commend Chrystal and Nancy for putting together a great party. I picked up national chair Bill Redpath at the airport and brought about 500 “Vote for Bob” stickers that I picked up from Rick McGinnis (The BumperSticker.com).

    My guess on the attendance was about 40 people. This was disappointing. I would hope that more people could come out to support all the work Bob and Kevin are doing, especially with Bob Barr coming in from Georgia and Bill Redpath coming in from Virginia.

    However, in the room right next door was a similar rally for Republican governor Rick Perry. I don’t know that their audience was much bigger and they definitely noticed us. We had a large “Republicans for Smither” sign in the lobby that everyone saw. Several students showed up for their rally, but came over to ours for autographs from Bob Barr.

    Patrick Dixon

  • http://www.bloodymarybreakfast.blogspot.com Brock

    24 hours later: the sound of silence is deafening.

  • Derrick

    Yeah, there’s nothing on Google News, either. Did Barr show up?

  • Devious David

    Maybe they are busy cashing all the checks they received and planning for all the volunteers who signed up.

  • http://www.bloodymarybreakfast.blogspot.com Brock

    Con-fabbing with the press that showed up on the appropriate tone for their accounts?

  • Derrick

    Still trying to make their way out of a crowd of screaming, lovestruck teen girls? (think Bob Smither as Elvis)

  • paulie

    Beamed away on a UFO by space aliens?

  • http://www.bloodymarybreakfast.blogspot.com Brock

    Yeah. Or alien time machines. The new #3 makes the whole thread seem … wierd(er).

  • Derrick

    I think the first post from a new email address is delayed until the moderator approves it. That’s probably what happened with #3.

    40 people is a disappointing turnout. But, that’s probably due to the last-minute nature of it. It’s hard to draw a big crowd quickly, what with all the other political announcements competing for bandwidth.

    More important than the number of people in the crowd… was the media there?

  • Graham

    Damn… New poll shows Smither at only 4%, Lampson 36%, Hyphen 35%..if you believe Zogby.

  • Graham
  • Chuck

    He’ll probably end up around double-2.5X that, thanks to him being on the ballot and the radio ads. Too bad, we’ve still got rex bell to pull off a win though. You can’t win an election(unless you have something utterly absurd) with only $11,000 dollars as the underdog when your rivals have a millon and $300,000.

  • Timothy West

    I dont believe Zogby. And I damn sure know that Lampson is not going to draw more R support. They want me to believe that R’s are going to support Lampson?

    If that is really the case, this is going to be A BLOODBATH for the R’s. A Democratic ChainSaw Massacre.

  • disinter

    I’m with Tim on this one.

    At any rate, if Lampson does win, it will make them (Repubs) think twice about why they didn’t vote for the Libertarian.

  • Graham

    I wasn’t saying these polls were accurate, just that they are the ones the media seems to be going by at this point. I tend to think even if they were, Smither would have an increase on actual election day just because he is on the ballot.

    The Republican support for Lampson is certanly suspicious.

    I did a Google News search and the only new news on Smither were the 4% polls and a NYT article that doesnt even mention him in the CD 22 candidate profiles.

  • Graham

    also even the wording of the poll is “Thirty-five percent of respondents said they would vote for a write-in candidate”

    “would” vote for a write-in and “I am definitely going to vote for a write-in and write-in the name of Shelley Sekula-Gibbs”.. are not the same thing.

    I am even more suspicious of the poll that only 4% are voting for someone actually on the ballot opposed to a Democrat.

  • Graham

    and at least “one voter in 4 is decided” is a good thing.

  • http://www.bloodymarybreakfast.blogspot.com Brock

    That’s a very sobering poll. I don’t like the results but, without running a regression, they seem consistent throughout the poll. It will be interesting to see how it matches up with the real results.

    One thing that popped at me was the complete lack of support from anyone other than white respondents. Broken down as completely as they are, I wouldn’t find it significant if, say, there was no Asian support. But, aggregated, that 40% of the respondents should have resulted in ~ 8 additional Smither responses instead of 0.

  • http://www.bloodymarybreakfast.blogspot.com Brock

    And, then I look again and find those 8 responses vs. a write-in. Odd that they aren’t there when hyphen is specifically mentioned.

  • TerryP

    Mike

    You said “At any rate, if Lampson does win, it will make them (Repubs) think twice about why they didn’t vote for the Libertarian.”

    I am actually thinking that if Lampson wins, the Reps are going to do everything they can to make sure people think that it is the fault of the Libertarians and the Republicans voting for a Libertarian. They will try to shame them so that they will get them “in-line” for future elections to ensure that they will vote a straight republican (or democrat) ticket in the future no matter what their candidates stand for.

    We have gotten to the point where IMO at least 60% of each parties members will pull the lever for their parties candidates no matter what they stand for. This is part of the reason why Ron Paul keeps winning in his district. Reps for national health care, no problem; Dems for abolishing medicare, no problem, as long as they have the proper letter behind their name. We are sheeple being led to slaughter.

  • TerryP

    If the poll was done by Zogby I am not to sure about its results. I just took a poll done by them. It had some of the most leading questions on it. (If you knew this or this what would you do? Now that you know this what will you do? The things they were suggesting weren’t necessarily based in any scientific fact either). They were going to get the answers they wanted from it no matter what even if they had to lead you to the answer they wanted. The problem is the media catches on to these horrible polls and it becomes “gospel”. Voters aren’t going to give it a second thought. They will believe what the media is telling them. They have know idea how poorly done they can be.

    IMO this poll was done on the congressional race to make sure the reps think they have a chance with their write-in candidate and make sure you do not give your vote to Smither. Many voters will look no further than Smither 4% and pull the lever for the write-in since it shows she has a chance to win.

  • http://www.free-thinkr.com Kevin

    I voted early last Friday and hyphen lady had her goons out giving fliers on how to vote for her in the parking lot. Unfortunatly, Tom Delay got my neighborhood cut out of TX-22 and put us in a majority Democratic district. (There was no one running against Al Green!) Anyway, she has the money and will probably pull it off. Her name is spelled in the ballot box and she is running commercials on how to vote for her. While I don’t know if she will win, she won’t get a majority.

    As for the poll. The percentage that will vote for a write-in canidate was about 35% and those that will vote for hyphen lady was 30% while the other 5% was other people, I believe. Lampson is at 35% and Smither at 5%.

  • Phil

    The Zogby poll has some very suspicious things about it that make me think it was rigged by the media to produce a desired result.

    1. It makes no distinction between the Special and General election.

    2. It’s numbers for Lampson are suspiciously low. He’s been holding a core base of about 42-43% for almost a year, yet suddenly dropped to 36.

    3. It’s numbers for the hyphen-lady are really a generic write-in count. She drops to 29% on her own.

    4. Zogby’s methodology is suspect. He uses the “likely voter” tab, which tends to inflate major party loyalists. His report also gives no indication of the survey was random, or from a sampler list of registered Zogby users. That makes it suspect to me.

    The bad part is that the news media types aren’t intelligent or honest enough to apply due scrutiny to this poll, so their reporting will be skewed toward the major parties. Our job is to refute that on the blogosphere though.

  • Phil

    Proof of the poll’s deception:

    http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/politics/poll/1028/22ndcd/

    The Chronicle is misportraying Gibbs’ support at 35% to Lampson’s 36%. In reality those 35% (177/504) only responded that they’d vote for one of 3 write-in candidates. Of those 177 voters who will write in, 141 back Gibbs and the rest one of the others. That puts Gibbs at 141/504 responses, or 27.9% – not 35% claimed by the Houston Comical.

    And that assumes the poll sample was even accurate to start with…and I’m suspicious it wasn’t.

  • Derrick

    Well, this is politics. When we get hit like this we need to fight back.

    One way to do so is to release the results of a different poll to competing media outlets. Even an internally-conducted poll could be persuasive, if the sample size was big enough and details on the methodology were provided. But, a poll conducted by a reputable polling company would carry more weight.

    Of course, it’s possible that Smither’s chances are being overhyped by the campaign, and he really is only polling at 4%. It would not be the first time that happened. But, that number does seem pretty low. One would have to actually *try* to get a total that low in a two-way race with a strong write-in.

  • http://www.free-thinkr.com Kevin

    Sorry Phil but I don’t buy that 42-43% for Lampson for the last year. This distric is TX-22 and if Delay would of run in this election, he would have won. The only possible way for a Democrat to win was to get the Republican’s off the balot and they still may not win.

  • disinter

    Here’s one way we can start winning elections:

    http://fixavote.com/

    :)

  • paulie

    Go for it.

  • disinter
  • Derrick

    OK, so do you mean to tell me that frickin’ Bob Barr was at a Smither rally, and there was not a single news story about it?

    What was done to announce the event to the media? Anything?

  • Devious David

    First off, I beleive and have beleived that Zogby is probably a CFR member. Those polls can be used to manipulate people and the media. And of course, the media can manipulate the polls.

    Secondly, the election results are rigged. I honestly think that we will see virtually identical results as we did last election. That’s another reason for the phoney poll: it’s a cover up. Smither might ACTUALLY win. But we won’t ever know it either way. Expect the “official” results to be about the same as last time, whatever that was. In fact, expect that for ALL elections.

    When that happens, will some of you beleive that the elections are a sham and watering the message down any amount won’t make a difference?

  • http://www.mainstreamlibertarian.com Eric Dondero

    I know Republicans, since I am one. I can tell you they were surely behind this poll. And my guess is that they commissioned this poll with a few different goals in mind, one of them to knock Smither out of the race.

    At first glance, they appear to have done this. But what is being overlooked is that we have two independents for Governor this year Kinky Friedman and Carole Strayhorn. Both are polling around 20%.

    Kinky and Carole voters will be very inclined to vote for Bob Smither in TX CD-22.

    Still, this is a wake-up call for Bob and his Campaign. The message is loud and clear. START RUNNING THOSE TV ADS NOW!!!

  • http://www.mainstreamlibertarian.com Eric Dondero

    Another quick comment. The handful of Republicans that have supported Bob Smither through this whole election season have really, really stuck their necks out, like Bob Barr. The Republican Party is a team. One cannot underestimate how pissed off fellow Republicans get, when you leave the team, even if ever-so-briefly. I hope Libertarian Party members appreciate the sacrifice Barr and others have made for the LP this year.

    Perhaps the LP should repay Barr with a Presidential Nomination for 2008?

  • paulie

    Yeah right Eric. The head of the ACLU will be on the ticket with Boortz too.

    Devious nailed it:

    the elections are a sham and watering the message down any amount won’t make a difference

    Eric’s right about the NSGOP dirty tricks crew being behind the poll. And about TV ads.

  • Phil

    #32 – Derrick – The Barr event was publicized widely. They even appended it to his radio ads all week. There were press releases and calls made. The news cameras were even in proximity of the rally as GOP Gov. Perry was holding an event right next door in the same hotel at the same time.

    There’s an intentional media blackout of Smither’s campaign in Houston. The main culprit is the local rag, the Houston Chronicle. Kristen Mack – their political reporter – started taking gratuitous digs at Smither in early October aimed at denigrating his campaign (e.g. slipping in statements saying he hadn’t raised enough money etc.). Now they’re ignoring him entirely and pushing fake polls to diminish his significance.

    The Hyphen-Lady is also in all out war against him. Her people have cut down and shredded dozens of Smither 4×8 billboards in the district. They know its her because she’s the only one who benefits from taking away Smither votes.

  • paulie

    Ah yes, those freedom’loving Rapepubliccons.

  • Derrick

    Her people have cut down and shredded dozens of Smither 4×8 billboards in the district. They know its her because she’s the only one who benefits from taking away Smither votes.

    Man, I would set up a hidden camera, or some kind of sting operation. If you can catch one of her flunkies in the act, it could make her look really bad.

    That’s just dishonest and dirty.

  • http://www.lpalabama.org/blog/14 paulie

    Hey, good idea!

    Of course she would probably deny that they were acting with her knowledge or consent, she’d just say they got over enthusiastic and did it on their own. Still it would make good publicity if you don’t get blacked out.

  • Devious David

    paulie has it. She would deny it. She might not be supporting such things anyway for all we know. The publicity would get blacked out though, because we have a free and open press.

    Good folks those Republicans. At least God is on their side.

    Like I have told you folks for months now. There is no limit to what these people are willing to do on ALL levels to prevent such a thing from happening. Concerted conspiracies, spontaneous conspiracies and individuals acting alone are working hard to prevent Smither from winning. The rank and file sheep of the GOP must not be allowed to think and act individually. They must be controlled and the election manipulated by whatever means necessary. And it must be done surreptitiously so that nobody is the wiser and the sheep still bleat in apathy for what is really going on behind their backs, on their dime and in their name!

  • Phil

    #39 Derrick – The hyphen-lady’s people have been caught red handed attacking Smither signs.

    Even better – it was a Republican elected official.

    http://www.bobsmither.com/stop_vandalizing_our_signs

    Earlier this week a Smither sign was ripped off its posts near a highway in Sugar Land. The idiot who committed this crime made one huge mistake though: he put another sign up in its place, using Smither’s own stakes!

    He thought he could get away with it because the sign he put up was an anonymous attack poster against the Democrats – one of about 30 that went up on Tuesday. The local media dug around in the paper trail though and found the culprit: GOP County Commissioner Andy Meyers. Meyers is on the hyphen lady’s endorsements list and he’s hosted a bunch of fundraisers for her.

  • Phil

    #40 – They pinged the culprit for one the Smither signs that got ripped down on Tuesday, and he’s no ordinary Gibbs volunteer acting alone.

    It was Fort Bend County Commissioner Andy Meyers – a Republican elected official and big time Shelley supporter who has held several fundraisers for her. Smither has a letter up on his website right now demanding that Shelley apologize.

  • http://www.mainstreamlibertarian.com Eric Dondero

    Hey, really nice of you guys to just slam all of us Republicans, even after we’ve gone out of our way to bust our asses for Libertarian Bob Smither.

    You’d think a thank you would be in order.

    Nah, Libertarians are too cynical for that. Better just to kick us libertarian Republicans in the teeth instead.