Cook: Republicans In Panic Mode Over Arkansas Governor’s Race
by February 10, 2014 9:17 am 90 views
Arkansas and national Republicans are getting desperate when it comes to our gubernatorial race. It seems their likely nominee, Asa Hutchinson, is in a free-fall and in desperate need of help.
On Friday of last week, Republican-leaning polling firm Rasmussen released a poll on the Governor’s race showing Democrat Mike Ross leading Asa Hutchinson 44% to 41%. If correct, those are freak-out numbers for Republicans.
Mike Ross has been up on statewide TV for the past few weeks introducing himself to Arkansas voters and improving his poll numbers. Since Asa Hutchinson’s fundraising is so abysmal, the Republic candidate can’t afford to respond, leaving Ross to dominate the airwaves by himself.
From the beginning of the campaign, Asa had bragging rights that he was ahead in every released public poll. With this latest poll, that talking point is gone forever. Asa Hutchinson is in desperate need of help.
Today, in an effort to prop the flailing probable nominee, comes news the Republican Governor’s Association is starting to buy up media time to begin running a TV ad(s) attacking Mike Ross.
Please note the timeline, horrible poll numbers released Friday – desperate TV time buying begins on Monday. Once their first ad is released, we’ll update the story.
The RGA can help prop up Asa Hutchinson for a time, but if he doesn’t raise his own funds, they’ll likely abandon him and put their resources elsewhere.
Frankly, Arkansas’s governor’s race is not that important in comparison to hot gubernatorial races in the battleground states of Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. I think we could all agree that for national politics the Governor of Ohio is more important to the 2016 Presidential contest than who the Governor of Arkansas is.
That’s a problem for Asa Hutchinson. The RGA is well-funded, but if Asa’s polling continues to slip and his fundraising continues to lag, they’ll cut him loose and focus on winnable races in big states.
This explains why they’re buying up TV time now: they need to prop Asa up lest he continues his polling free-fall and the race becomes a lost cause.
The Republic Party is now in full-fledged panic mode over Arkansas Governor’s race.