| The race between Menendez and Junior is still a statistical dead heat. Folks (56%) aren't really thinking about the Senate race too much just yet and a large percentage (20%) is still undecided.
One thing is clear: New Jerseyans are fretting over the economy. An overwhelming majority (73%) of respondents said they're most worried about jobs, taxes and cost-of-living and say Kean, Jr. and Menendez need to focus on economic issues.
Says Patrick Murray, the director of the Monmouth Polling Institute, "Right now the overwhelming external event is what happened with the state budget. Tied to that is the sales tax and property tax relief. They are putting their officials on notice that they need to talk about these issues."
Courier Post: Shore area voters who say they're supporting one candidate over the other base their decisions on a variety of reasons, some having nothing to do with policy.
Jane Holland of Stafford said she's supporting Kean because she knows the Kean family and "you tend to sway toward people you know.
Middletown resident Stephanie Hackenberg said she's voting for Menendez to help ensure Democrats regain control of "as many branches of the government as we can."
Naturally the two campaigns have different interpretations of the latest poll.
Sen. Menendez' spokesman Matt said the senator is "not paying too much attention to polls right now. There have been a number of polls all of them have been showing Menendez moving up and Kean staying stagnant or going backwards," Miller said.
"The more that the people of New Jersey see that Menendez is standing up to George Bush in Washington and the more they see that Kean will be a foot soldier for George Bush, the better we'll do."
Jill Hazelbaker, a Kean spokeswoman, insists that Junior won't be just another Bush Administration shill. In her attempt to distance her candidate from Bush, she delivers a right hook to the President, "(Kean Jr.) is a reformer, with the backbone to take on this administration for some of its bad policies."
What an illuminating response! (that was the really good news by the way: the public acknowledgement from Junior's campaign that Bush's aura is about as caustic as, i junno, cat pee or something.)
Hazelbaker: "It's not unusual that this race will come down to the independents, who we feel will break for Tom Kean."
Not so fast Jill. Says Simon Massel, an independent, who's voting for Menendez as a protest against President Bush, "we have been led by an idiot for a term and a half and the people around him don't seem to be any brighter. I'm not a Democrat, I'm just anti-Bush."
If this refects the tenor of the average independent votes, Junior doesn't stand a chance.
The tea leaves tell me that campaign platforms are less relevant in this race (at this point)than issues like Iraq, the deficit and our Presidents miserable tenure.
What is you make of it? |
