Lachlan McIntosh over at Brad Hutto’s Senate campaign made sure today that I saw this piece by Jimmy Williams:
In head-to-head matchups against his three opponents Graham can’t hit 50%. In most of the polls, he isn’t close, averaging about 45%. Bottom line: people know Lindsey Graham and they’ve made their minds up about him.
Like most incumbents, Lindsey Graham has very little room to grow and will likely not move much in the polling. Independent-conservative Thomas Ravenel, of Southern Charm fame, and Libertarian Victor Kocher are combining for near 15% in these polls. I have to assume nearly all of it is coming from Graham. Ravenel will likely spend millions of his own daddy’s money to help seal Lindsey’s fate. And so in the end, Ravenel and Kocher give very conservative voters a place to go other than Graham, whom they despise for his positions and votes on immigration reform and global warming and for his votes in support of Obama’s judicial nominees.
In recent history, Democrats in South Carolina normally end up somewhere in the mid 40’s on election night. In Obama’s two elections down in my home state, he finished with 45% and 44% here. In 2010, state Senator Vincent Sheheen received 47% in his bid for governor. The Democratic nominee for Lt. Governor got 45% and Matthew Richardson who was running for Attorney General ended up with 44%. In 2008, the guy who ran as a Democrat against Lindsey Graham and didn’t spend any money got 42% of the vote. And no, I have no clue who the hell he was….
That math is pretty similar to the scenario that Lachlan painted for me not long ago. But note that ominous bit at the end of that excerpt, about not remembering who the Democratic nominee even WAS in 2008 (I had to look it up myself; his name was Bob Conley).
Brad Hutto isn’t in quite as bad a position as that, in terms of name recognition, but he has a ways to go to be competitive, as Williams notes:
Despite being well known in the bubble of the state legislature, Hutto isn’t well known with most voters. For now, he’s showing up in the mid to lower 30’s in the polling. But most of the undecided voters are Democrats and Independents. Assuming Hutto can raise enough money to make a decent TV buy later in the fall, he’ll end up in the mid 40’s – right there with Lindsey Graham….
The Hutto campaign is betting they can raise that money and make that buy and hit the mid-40s. We’ll see…
The ad below shows the message Sen. Hutto will be trying to get out.
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So what they’re saying is… it’s still far from the realm of possibility to beat Graham…
Mr Williams probably didn’t remember Bob Conley because Conley wasn’t a Democrat.
To refresh your memory about Bob Conley, here’s what I wrote about him back in ’08:
Sen. Hutto starts out as a dramatically more reputable candidate than Mr. Conley ever was…
Brad Hutto has no chance- thank goodness.
Lindsey will crush him in the upstate- where the Orangeburg Democrat has no name recognition and his support of many national democratic policies won’t help him at all.
Supports Obama-care
Pro abortion
Voted “NO” on secret ballot elections for union votes (doesn’t want employees to be able to vote secretly)
and Brad is running on a platform of not being involved as a “policeman” to the world. Sounds good- but that issue probably won’t help him right now since there is a good reason to be involved around the world right now.