The latest Chicago
Tribune poll appears to track
closely with recent polls conducted by two Republican statewide
contenders. The poll found Judy Baar Topinka leading the
GOP governor’s race with 38 percent, followed by Jim Oberweis
at 17 percent, Ron Gidwitz finally breaking into double digits with
11 percent, and Bill Brady bringing up the rear at 8 percent.
Twenty-five percent of those polled were undecided. Those results match up pretty well with the
findings of polls conducted by two GOP gubernatorial candidates
whose campaigns shared their results this week on the condition
that the numbers not be revealed. Topinka and Gidwitz were the biggest gainers,
each up by 7 points, since the Tribune’s previous poll in October. Gidwitz has
almost tripled his October numbers, but he has spent millions of
dollars on TV ads in the process. Topinka has done little actual
campaigning since October, but the word that she is the
organizational choice has had time to get out to
“regular” Republicans. Oberweis picked up 2 points and
Brady picked up 1. The results could be looked at as a call for
Gidwitz and Oberweis to go negative on Topinka, but that move may
carry a big risk. Topinka and Oberweis are evenly splitting
“very conservative voters,” according to the Tribune. About the only
way for Oberweis to let those voters know that he’s one of
them and Topinka isn’t would be to run so-called comparative
ads, which are usually highly negative in tone. If the moderate Gidwitz allows fellow
moderate Topinka to hover around 40 percent for long, he’ll
never pick up enough votes to win. Yes, Gidwitz’s numbers are
going up, but it’s been like spending a fortune to budge the
Titanic a foot off the ocean floor. Word from inside is that the Gidwitz and Oberweis
campaigns have been strongly urging each other for days through an
e-mail exchange to start the attacks on Topinka, but apparently neither
side is willing to do so yet. Gidwitz, like many political neophytes,
is reportedly reluctant to get down and dirty. Oberweis is already
viewed negatively for his infamous 2004 “black helicopter”
ads and probably doesn’t want to suffer the consequences of being
the first to pull the trigger against Topinka. Candidates who attack usually succeed in
driving down their opponents’ numbers, but those newly
disaffected voters don’t immediately (or ever) gravitate
toward the negative campaigner. However, voters who buy into negative attacks
often either head temporarily into the undecided column or, if
it’s a crowded field, choose a different candidate. The most
famous instance of this was the 1992 Democratic U.S. Senate
primary, when Al Hofeld’s well-funded negative assault on
Alan Dixon drove voters into Carol Moseley Braun’s camp.
Negative campaigns also usually temporarily drive down the numbers
of those running the ads. Oberweis seems most intent for now on keeping
fellow social conservative Bill Brady as near to zero as possible
or getting him out of the race once and for all. Brady has
aggravated Oberweis to no end by using a direct-mail campaign to
paint the dairy magnate as a flipflopper. Brady appears to be
hoping to deprive Oberweis of conservative votes so that he can
consolidate his position and move into second place, then pray that
enough late money pours in to fund the drive to the finish line. If
Oberweis attacks Topinka, it’s possible that voters will head
for Brady’s camp. For now, though, Brady just doesn’t
have the funds to compete, at least that we know of. His first TV
ad was very good, but there were so few ratings points behind it
that nobody saw it enough to do Brady any good. Word is, Brady has
just bought ads on Chicago cable TV. Total buy: $5,000. Jim
Oberweis spends more than that handing out free ice cream every
day.
This article appears in Feb 9-15, 2006.
