As reported last week, we now know that the three DFL candidates for Congress in Minnesota’s 8th Congressional district will likely compete in an August primary to face Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN8) next fall. Tarryl Clark’s campaign has sent me a memo touting Clark’s fundraising success (with numbers to be released next week) and highlights from an internal poll they put in the field. They like what they see. Here is the exact wording of the polling memo:
The Landscape
- Among primary voters it is currently a three-way tie between Tarryl Clark and the two other candidates: Rick Nolan and Jeff Anderson. But voters move en masse to Tarryl Clark when they learn more about her record of advocacy on behalf of Minnesota’s families and communities.
- The critique that Tarryl Clark is not from the district has no power. It does not diminish Tarryl Clark’s voter share.
The Reality
- The first three months of 2012 marked our strongest fundraising quarter to date, even better than the $228,147 raised in the third quarter of 2011.
- Our campaign is the only one raising the money necessary to take on a well-funded incumbent. Clark ended 2011 with a dramatic financial advantage over other DFL challengers, reporting $275,377 on hand at the end of 2011, compared with the $35,867 for Nolan and the $13,188 for Anderson.
- Tarryl Clark’s fundraising is competitive with that of Representative Chip Cravaack. Clark finished 2011 with $275,377 on hand to Cravaack’s $514,879. Clark outraised Cravaack among individuals in the 4th quarter, highlighting her grassroots strength.
The landscape of this race combined with the financial reality shows that Tarryl Clark will be the nominee to take on Representative Chip Cravaack in the fall and win the 8th Congressional district seat. Clark and the campaign are eliciting an overwhelmingly positive response from the people in Minnesota’s 8th district. The voters are excited to have a voice in electing someone who is fighting for job creation and standing up for our families and communities, while actively raising the money necessary to take on Representative Chip Cravaack and his Koch brother-funded super-PACS.
I’ve asked the Clark campaign for the script on those questions. “Prompting” means that respondents get a spiel of some sort before being asked their opinion a second time. Nevertheless, I think that it’s probably accurate to say that none of the candidates begin this race with a strong advantage in name ID and that the “prompting” done by the next four months of DFL campaigning will greatly influence the result of the primary. Also, one advantage of fundraising prowess is you get to release internal polls like this.
UPDATE: The Clark campaign won’t be release their script for this poll as it reflects “campaign strategy.” In other news, Clark’s opponent Rick Nolan announced another labor endorsement this afternoon, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. This puts him with the most labor endorsements, followed by Anderson and Clark, who has the Steelworkers. Nolan remains the frontrunner for the May DFL endorsement, which will frame the primary from that point forward.
The PDF of Clark’s selected highlights from the internal poll is below the jump. (Click on this post’s headline)
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