The Montgomery County Commissioners race is starting to heat up, now that the uncontested primaries are over. On the Democratic side we have incumbent Ruth Damsker and former congressman Joe Hoeffel. A number of people (myself included) think the race will hinge on who gets third place. Joe Hoeffel and Republican Bruce Castor, currently the county's district attorney, are assumed to take the top two spots. Damsker will duke it out with incumbent Republican Jim Matthews.
This is borne out by a poll from Bennett, Petts & Normington. The The telephone survey was conducted among 500 likely voters on May 9, 10 and 14. The sampling error for the poll is plus or minus 4.4 percent.
From the press release:
Hoeffel leads the trial heat match-up with 49 percent of the vote. Damsker is currently third with 30 percent, four points ahead of fellow incumbent James Matthews. District Attorney Bruce Castor, who is running for county commissioner, ran second in the poll with 42 percent of the vote.
With the margin of error that puts Damsker and Matthews neck and neck.
later
In the poll, nearly half of all voters (48 percent) said they would like to see the Democrats win a majority on the board of commissioners. Only a third (33 percent), said they would like to see the Republicans in the majority. In response to another question, only 36 percent of the respondents said the Republicans have done a good job managing the county and deserved to be elected, while 53 percent believe the Republicans have been in power too long, and it is time to give the Democrats a chance.
Former Montgomery County commissioner Jim Maza and state party committeewoman Joanne Olszewski are serving as Damsker and Hoeffel's campaign co-chairs. Tony Heyl has come on board as finance director. The campaign website is votedamskerhoeffel.com
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6 comments:
Hmmm, I wonder if the Inky op-ed page will endorse the idea, like it has in the past few cycles in Philadelphia, that one party has ruled for too long in MontCo and it's time to give the other party, in MontCo's case the Dems, a chance to govern?
I'm really looking forward to this race.
The main task is to raise Damsker's profile from "nice, unassuming" to someone you can trust with the keys to the county. This partisan poll notwithstanding, there's some persuasion to be done; after all, Matthews beat Damsker in '03.
But the generic numbers, even assuming some inflation, show that the commission is there for the taking. As much as the R registration advantage has shrunk in recent years, I wonder if even their present number is soft. I have the feeling that there are some who don't change registration, or who don't get substantially involved, out of fear of the remaining vestiges of the Republican machine. Maybe a tossup contest at the top of the county ballot this year will get them to flip for good.
It'll help if Bruce Castor can't control himself and continues to do dumb things like threaten Damsker with libel suits. Slugging it out with Damsker into a "he said, she said" stalemate helps to make Matthews the forgotten man - which is how the R's lose.
PD, good point, we'll have to wait and see
LI, you have given me some excellent suggestions for following the race and numbers to keep track of. Thanks!
I think you will find that Castor has set Damsker up on the scientific testing thing. A Castor plant backed Damsker into a corner and made her say she was referring the matter to the AG. Trouble is, that only Castor can do that...which he did. Now the AG will clear everyone involved and thereby have inoculated Matthews/Castor against the issue in the fall. Expect NMS to file the lawsuit, not Castor at first (he'll join it after the election). You might note that the Ds poll notwithstanding, Castor creamed Hoeffel in total votes making the poll suspect...doubly so when they won't release the questions. There is a reason Castor always leads the ticket in Montco. He'll pull Matthews along. When Damsker called for a reassessment, that killed her, even though she is backing away. Hard to do when you do it on television.
2004 Primary (Montco):
Pepper 60931
Casey 35575
It's one to watch, that's for sure.
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