Posted on 05/27/2010 7:03:06 AM PDT by SmokingJoe
Businessman Ron Johnson, endorsed at last weekend’s state Republican Convention, is now running virtually even against incumbent Democrat Russ Feingold in Wisconsin’s race for the U.S. Senate.
A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Wisconsin shows Feingold with 46% support to Johnson’s 44%. Three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate, and six percent (6%) remain undecided.
As he has in surveys since the beginning of the year, Feingold continues to fall just short of 50% regardless of which Republican he’s matched against. Incumbents who earn less than 50% of the vote at this stage of a campaign are considered potentially vulnerable. Feingold was reelected to a third term in 2004 with 56% of the vote.
This is the first survey to include Johnson, the latest entrant in Wisconsin’s topsy-turvy GOP Senate field. Former Governor Tommy Thompson froze the field for months with speculation that he would run, and Rasmussen Reports surveys consistently showed him running even or better against Feingold.
Then in April Thompson announced he wasn’t running, and Richard Leinenkugel, the state’s Commerce secretary, jumped in. But Feingold outdistanced Leinenkugel and two longtime candidates in the race, real estate entrepreneur Terrence Wall and businessman Dave Westlake, in a survey last month.
Johnson has entered the contest since then and won the party endorsement on the first ballot of the convention, after Leinenkugel in a surprise move threw his support to the newcomer. State Republicans will pick their nominee in a September 14 primary, but Johnson for now is widely expected to win.
Feingold now earns 47% support against Wall, who picks up 41% of the vote. Five percent (5%) like another candidate, and seven percent (7%) are undecided.
In a match-up with Westlake, Feingold again gets 47% to his GOP opponent’s 38%. Seven percent (7%) favor some other candidate in the race. Eight percent (8%) are undecided.
Feingold would have preferred Leine...
Johnson is a real threat especially with the governors race this year too...this election in WI either puts us on a path to recovery or the final nail in the coffin as an manufacturing state.
We’ll see.
I can’t find a website for this guy. Does he really not have one?
Imagine McCain/Fiengold out in the same election year?
www.ronjohnsonforsenate.com
Website is not up to par yet, but there are a number of pod casts from talk radio personalities here in WI.
Thanks. They need some SEO help for sure. Googling his name doesn’t bring up the site. They’ve indexed it, but it’s not showing in the serps.
Thanks.
Maybe Wisconsin can neutralize the effect of Minnesota’s election of that idiot Al Franken.
You are so damn right. Voter fraud in Milwaukee and Dane county are rampant. He need to be up by 5% or more to overcome the ridiculous voter fraud in WI.
W..... from Racine
Terence Wall was definitely not going to get the job done, not with his drawbacks, and he's now reportedly dropping out of the race. Dave Westlake isn't ready to run a winning Senate campaign. Leinenkugel's service in a Dem administration sent a confusing message to the electorate.
We'll have to see how Ron Johnson is as a candidate, but he has a great candidate profile especially in a year like this one. It's amazing that he's polling so well; I suspect his numbers will fall a bit before climbing back up.
these are going to be the tough battles...where you have a Democrat incumbent and the Republican is within the margin of error. ACORN and the SEIU will be pulling out all the stops in these races.
Its crazy to think my fellow Americans still have the likes of BOXER and FEINGOLD at near 50% and slightly leading their races..... are we that stupid to repeat the past mistakes?
Two words....Milwaukee and Madison. You don’t even want to know what goes on with voting in those two cities. Just look at the recent history, slashed tires on GOP van election morning. Free smokes for the homeless from a New York city liberal, caught by tv news crews. That’s just for starters.
I was skeptical about millionaire businessman Ron Johnson being able to take down Feingold, but, boy, am I glad to have been wrong! Feingold at only 465, and Johnson only 2% behind before he even began to campaign in earnest? This is looking really good for us. And with the governorship likely going GOP this November, Johnson will have help atop the ticket (especially if Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker wins the GOP gubernatorial nomination).
With this development in WI, Fiorina poised to win the GOP nomination in CA and Rossi entering the race in WA, the road to *52* GOP Senate seats has now been paved:
41 current GOP Senate seats (all of which we will hold)
+
ND (Hoeven)
+
IN (Coats)
+
DE (Castle)
+
AR (Boozman)
+
NV (Lowden)
+
CO (Norton)
+
PA (Toomey)
+
IL (Kirk)
=
49 likely GOP Senate seats
+
WA (Rossi)
+
CA (Fiorina)
+
WI (Johnson)
=
52 probable GOP Senate seats.
Yes, I’m going to say 52 “probable” GOP Senate seats. If I had to guess right now, I would say that Murray, Boxer and Feingold will lose in November, since they’re stuck in the mid-to-high 40s in head-to-head polling and have not even begun to be attacked for their unpopular votes. A pickup of 10 Senate seats would have sounded ridiculous 6 months ago, but I think it’s likelier than not right now.
And I’m not even mentioning McMahon in CT or Huffman in OR (or whoever ends up running against Gillibrand in NY), races in which the GOP has the potential to come out on top. That could push the total pickups to 12, which is the number of Senate seats the GOP picked up in 1980.
If the GOP can have 54 Senators by January 2011, the party would be poised to get to 60 as early as 2012 (when the Democrats will have over a dozen vulnerable seats, including Tester, Webb, McCaskill, Ben Nelson, Conrad, S. Brown, Bill Nelson, Stabenow, Menendez, Kohl, Cantwell, Lieberman, Akaka, Byrd’s seat, and potentially a few others). And 2014 will have as many vulnerable Democrats as 2012 (Begich, Landrieu, Franken, Hagan, T. Johnson, M. Udall, Baucus, Harkin, Shaheen, Pryor, T. Udall, Merkley, Rockefeller, Lautenberg, Levin’s seat, and potentially a few others). Even if the GOP “only” picks up 10 Senate seats in 2010, and even if in 2012 and 2014 half the Democrat targets slip away and a couple of Republicans lose, it would be reasonable to predict that there would be 67 GOP Senators come January of 2015.
465 = 46%
All of these gains would be awesome. Ruth Bader Ginsburg may have to set aside her retirement plans.
I’ll bet if we had 67 Republican Senators, they’d still confirm Sonia, Ruth, and Butch Kagan.
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