Brady poll has him leading

BOISE – Democrat Jerry Brady released a new poll Wednesday showing that he’s made up a 19-point lag behind Republican Butch Otter since June in the race to be Idaho’s next governor and has now pulled two points ahead.

“We’re prepared to take back the governorship for the first time in 12 years,” Brady declared at a press conference with Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer.

Otter’s campaign dismissed Brady’s polls and said its own polls show otherwise. “The numbers are different, and we feel very confident that on Election Day the vote’s going to go our way,” said Jon Hanian, Otter’s campaign spokesman. But he declined to release the Otter campaign’s polls or say whether those polls show Otter in the lead.

“We have our own data but we’re not releasing it, the reason being that we think the only meaningful poll that is conducted is the one that happens on Election Day,” Hanian said.

Schweitzer, who in 2004 became the first Democrat elected governor of Montana in 16 years, said, “It’s not a shocker for me. This may be big news … across Idaho, but I’ve expected this, because this is the same thing that happened in Montana a couple years ago.”

Jim Weatherby, political scientist emeritus at Boise State University, said polls conducted and released by political candidates should be treated “with a degree of skepticism” but added, “It certainly energizes the Brady campaign and gives him greater credibility regardless of how accurate that poll might be. I mean, it’s news that a Democratic candidate for governor is still a viable candidate days before the election. That hasn’t happened since 1994.”

Schweitzer, spouting folksy phrases like “dang tootin’ ” and wearing a string tie, stood at Brady’s side to say, “I gotta tell ya, when I saw this exciting news that showed in Idaho, just like in Colorado, just like in Montana, you’re gonna elect a Democratic governor, I thought I wanted to be here for it.”

The Democratic candidate for governor is leading in polls in Colorado, where the current Republican governor is leaving office because of term limits. That state saw Democrats take over both houses of the state Legislature in 2004, along with a U.S. House seat and a Senate seat. But in Idaho, the entire congressional delegation is Republican, and the GOP controls 80 percent of the Legislature.

Brady’s polls were conducted by Goodwin Simon Victoria Research in June, early September and mid-October. The latest poll included 400 telephone interviews of likely Idaho voters between Oct. 13 and Oct. 15 and had a margin of error of 5 percentage points.

It showed Brady with 42 percent to Otter’s 40 percent – a statistical dead heat. That’s up from an 11-point edge for Otter in September and a 19-point Otter advantage in June.

The polling firm is a San Francisco-based “strategic research” firm founded by Amy Simon and Paul Goodwin that worked to pass and defend Oregon’s “right to die” law, defeat a partial birth abortion ban in Washington, and pass Montana’s 2004 medical marijuana law. The firm has done work for an array of clients, including Democratic caucuses in seven states and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Brady said he decided to release the polls in part because “Democrats have been discouraged for so long, they need good news, they need good news to decide to vote rather than to not vote.” He added, “These polls that were telling me I was 19 points behind are now telling me I’m two points ahead. … We could be up further than that. … We do expect to win this race.”

Brady, a former Idaho Falls newspaper publisher and the grandson of an Idaho governor, lost to incumbent GOP Gov. Dirk Kempthorne four years ago but held Kempthorne to a 56 percent majority.

Weatherby said, “It is a rather shocking result if indeed Jerry Brady is leading at this point, given the track record of Republican gubernatorial candidates in recent years.”

Otter is one of Idaho’s most-elected politicians – he was the state’s longest serving lieutenant governor and is completing his third term in Congress.

“The conventional wisdom is that Butch Otter would win this race,” Weatherby said. “But he has stumbled in this campaign,” changing positions on issues such as public-land-sale legislation and a school funding initiative.

Hanian said it’s “not uncommon this time of year for candidates who are lagging behind in a race to release a poll in an effort to generate some kind of enthusiasm to their campaign.”

He spoke from eastern Idaho, where Republican candidates are nearing the end of a 10-day, 74-city campaign bus tour. “Everywhere we’ve gone we’ve been greeted by large, very enthusiastic, vocal crowds,” Hanian said. “What we’re seeing in person and what we’re seeing in our own polling suggest that we’re right on schedule.”