As the national presidential debates come to a close, it is time to return to local debates and races where Democratic challengers are gaining ground, one of those is the Mike O’Brien for Congress campaign closing race with 26-year Republican incumbent Fred Upton, GOP Chair of the Energy and Commerce committee in the US House 6th Congressional District in Michigan. O’Brien dominated the first debate on October 9, 2012, the next debate is set for tonight - October 23, 2012. Check this one out - you just might like Mike.
MI-06 A Race in a Dead Heat?
Mixed Emotions, Results and Messages in a Split District
Recent polls show conflicting results on the support of the 26-year incumbent Fred Upton. From the Democratic sources, Mike O’Brien has closed the gap to the closest CD 6 has been in decades, on the other hand the Upton campaign is now pushing their own polls to convince voters there is no match, despite the positive statements and stories that have been running locally on the challenger, O’Brien.
From the Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest on October 11, 2012:
MI-06:
"Though GOP Rep. Fred Upton occupies a district that went for Obama by eight points in 2008, the race in MI-06 hasn't gotten a lot of attention this year. Despite facing down an unsuccessful Club for Growth-fueled primary challenge, Upton still has a huge campaign warchest, while his opponent, Marine vet Mike O'Brien, had only raised about $100K as of mid-July. But sometimes background factors matter more than candidate dynamics, and that appears to be what O'Brien's trying to demonstrate with a new internal from Myers Research that shows [Republican Incumbent] Upton leading [Democrat Challenger O’Brien] by just a 47-42 margin, with Libertarian Christie Gelineau taking 7 percent. That's still quite a climb for O'Brien, but what's most notable is how unfriendly this sample is [in the same poll]: Obama actually trails Mitt Romney 48-47..."
These Poll results (n = 400 likely voters, +/- 4.9%) are
also posted on the Huffington Post “Election Dashboard”.
According to Myers Research memo on the numbers in Michigan’s 6th Congressional District (CD) or MI-06:
Coming off a wave of television advertising by the Mike O’Brien campaign, our recent survey of Michigan’s 6th Congressional District finds incumbent Congressman Fred Upton in the danger zone for any incumbent, sitting well below majority status. Indeed, from the outset of our survey the content is locked in a statistical dead heat, with Upton ahead by just 5 points, 42 to 47 percent, while Libertarian candidate Christie Gelineau attracts 7 percent of the vote.
(Break)
Clear signs of incumbent burnout emerge throughout this survey, highlighting the trend we see overall. First, Upton’s personal standing is tepid, with 92 percent of the electorate able to recognize him, yet just 43 percent give him warm, favorable ratings, with 32 percent give him cool, unfavorable ratings, and a near neutral 52-degree personal feeling thermometer as measured on a scale of 0 to 100.
(Break)
Bottomline, Upton is incredibly vulnerable today and should the O’Brien campaign have the resources to continue to communicate, this contest could be extremely close come Election Day.
READ the entire report with actual questions and methodology details HERE.
From the Michigan Democratic Party in “Mike O’Brien Added to DCCC’s 'Emerging Races' List: O’Brien Now in Statistical Dead Heat with Upton in 6th Congressional District" on October 15, 2012:
LANSING – The Michigan Democratic Party today announced that now a fifth race in Michigan is drawing national attention and support from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which has added Mike O’Brien and the 6th Congressional District to its list of “Emerging Races.”
“Mike O’Brien is running a top-notch campaign, and he is successfully making the case to voters that Congressman Fred Upton has lost touch and no longer represents the people of southwestern Michigan,” said Michigan Democratic Party Chair Mark Brewer. “With a background as a Marine and small-business owner, Mike has the experience and leadership that voters of the 6th District want to see in a candidate. They don’t want someone that votes in lockstep with his party like Upton.”
Early during the GOP primary fight, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman
Steve Israel stated:
"The problem that a bunch of Republicans have is that as far to the right as they've gone they still face primaries from the far, far right," said Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel of New York yesterday. "If a tea party candidate defeats Fred Upton, that district is one that we would look at with added focus. It's historically a fairly moderate district and we would look at it."
So far, no major progressive organization has stepped up to assist O’Brien to unseat his weakened incumbent opponent, and his campaign is funded largely by small donations.
Upton goes Right-Wing: Losing Touch with the 6th District
How weakened, ragged and scarred is Upton by his GOP Primary Battles?
The GOP primary in the 6th District was generously "acrimonious" at best; downright "dirty" at it’s worst. The once “moderate’ positioned Upton has continually moved more and more to the right, adopting right-wing and “free enterprise” positions to weather attacks by those in the Tea Party and right-wing of the Michigan Republican Party (like Dick and Betsy DeVos) that have openly opposed Upton for years, cycle by cycle. According to a GOP challenger (and Tea Party radical-conservative favorite) Jack Hoogendyk following his loss to Upton, and bowing out of the US Senate race too:
Hoogendyk, reached by phone Tuesday, pointed to lower voter turnout this year than during the 6th District race two years ago. He said Upton’s negative campaigning was one reason for the low voter turnout.
Hoogendyk has joined Western Michigan GOP maven,
Pete Secchia, and is now front, center and way right in the fight to change Michigan into a
“Right to Work” for less state.
Coming to Upton’s rescue against the onslaught of challenges from within his own party were the executives from a long list of big corporations and the US Chamber of Commerce (USCC) that endorsed and spent hundreds of thousands on advertising shielding Upton. From the USCC ad to save Upton from Club for Growth attacks:
[NARRATOR:] There’s a lot standing in the way of American energy production and it’s costing us. Fred Upton is fighting to create more American energy jobs. Upton says the Keystone pipeline will create jobs and will strengthen energy security, so he’s fighting back against President Obama’s decision to block it. And Upton is fighting the bureaucracy that is standing in the way of new American energy development. Tell Fred Upton to keep standing up for American energy.
[U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 5/8/12]
According the Bridge Project and their
in-depth analysis of the US Chamber Ad supporting Fred Upton (May 2012):
An ad from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce relies on a set of unfounded suppositions about American energy in order to bolster Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The question is:
Did all these negative, largely localized and direct campaigning shut down the Republican and GOP-leaning voters’ will to turnout for Upton in the general election? Does this give O’Brien an opening this November?
VIDEO: Watch a clip of (a groggy?) Fred Upton during his GOP Primary victory party/celebration in St Joseph, MI on August 7, 2012. If any of his statements sound the same, they are, no matter what the venue or event, these are Upton’s standard talking points.
The Fred Upton for Congress campaign, led by Joe Wicks “who served as chief of staff and campaign manager for Tim Walberg… endorsed by Club for Growth” a right-wing billionaire organization that fought “the War on Fred Upton” that included an ad campaign that opposed Upton, has run polls of its own. From “Fred Upton's campaign claims big lead in the polls” story posted by the Upton-leaning local AM Radio station WKZO on October 17, 2012:
DOUGLAS (WKZO) -- Mike O’Brien may be making more headway when it comes to fundraising than former Democratic opponents, but the Upton Campaign says according to their polls, he is trailing with voters.
The Upton Campaign has countered by releasing the results from a poll that they say shows that Upton is leading among voters by 58 to 27%.
They say only 19% of the electorate knows enough about Mike O’Brien to have an opinion. The poll, Conducted by Hill Research Associates [SIC] has a plus or minus margin of error of 5.7%.
From another
newspaper story echoing the narrative pushed by the Upton campaign:
Upton's poll pegged name recognition as a leading problem for the O'Brien campaign's with 19 percent of respondents knowing enough about him to have either a favorable or unfavorable opinion. Also, of polled likely voters casting ballots for Barack Obama, 31 percent said they also planned to vote for Upton.
Somehow the math just doesn’t add up (not just the missing 15% of the electorate – presumably Libertarian or undecided still) in this poll by the Upton campaign. But then again it wasn't designed to add up.
Upton’s poll was conducted the Houston-based [David] Hill Research Consultants used by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), Texas Governor Rick Perry and other Republican and conservative organizations, including being a favorite source for oil & gas industry and other right-wing lobbying firms.
Local Newspaper Offers Late-Break Split Opinion on Upton vs. O’Brien Race
Confusion Not Just in the Polls, but in the Local Papers – the Cause? A real challenger
In a late election cycle editorial published by a former Chicago Tribune investigative reporter, one gets some sense of just how close this race has become. From Mickey Ciokajlo on October 18, 2012:
Voters in the 6th congressional district have a good problem on their hands: They have two good candidates to choose from. We believe that either Republican Fred Upton or Democrat Mike O’Brien could ably serve the district for the next two years.
(break)
Sadly, our politics have become increasingly strident and acrimonious in this country and, frankly, Upton has not been immune to this. We think, for example, that [Upton] spent too much time and energy on failed symbolic attempts to repeal [Obamacare] President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. We also were extremely disappointed with the failure of the bipartisan Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, or so-called “super committee,” on which Upton served.
We understand that Upton needed his [National GOP] party’s support to ascend to the chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee and to earn that support he had to play into the Republicans’ efforts to stop Obama’s agenda over the past two years. But we expect the next two years to be different.
Upton is plenty different already, but it's not by being in the slightest way 'bipartisan', in fact he is diving deeper and deeper into the dark radical side of his party, and in several cases since the primary has been the front man, to demonstrate his loyalty to GOP leadership.
Then the Kalamazoo Gazette has some good words for the challenger, Mike O’Brien:
O’Brien, making his first bid for public office, has run a good campaign. As a former Marine who has worked in farming, business and other ventures, he brings an impressive resume to the voters. But we don’t think he has made the case for replacing Upton. O’Brien has much to offer the 6th District and, should he lose on Nov. 6, we hope he stays involved in the public arena.
Then the feeble, weak appeal for the second half of a third decade of Upton in office:
But we believe Upton deserves two more years in office and we hope he uses his chairmanship in a bipartisan way to demonstrate strong leadership and to improve the 6th District.
So what is this
Kalamazoo Gazette reporter saying in this endorsement? To paraphrase, it says what many others have said frequently about Fred during his third decade in office: “
Vote for Fred one more time, maybe, just maybe, this time he will lead, and not be part of the problem.”
“Vote for Fred” even though he is only the shadow, politically, of the man he once was, is just not hacking it anymore down in Southwest Michigan, a region of the state that has serious local issues in unemployment, environment and economic development. This time he may not make it through, and the credentials and positive ‘we can do better’ time for some “courage” campaign has made a serious dent on the already declining popularity of the “Washington DC insider” version of Fred Upton.
In a recent interview this week Mike O’Brien talked about how well the race is going and the fact that this campaign has been one of the strongest Upton has ever faced in the MI-06:
Mike O’Brien: “It’s going really well. We’re getting a ton of traction. You know, it’s a fascinating thing because, everywhere I go, traveling in this district, I am met with all political stripes, all parties. Not just Democrats, but Republicans and Independents and Libertarians. I’d even sprinkle in a few tea party folks who come up to me and say they’re going to support us and that’s fantastic.”
(break)
“So, we’ve been running a very strong, lean and mean campaign. You know guarding the funds carefully, eating bread and water, if you will, and it’s getting results. One of the things that I’m most proud of is that we’ve been able to raise more from individuals in the district than any campaign to run against Fred Upton before. That’s not braggadocio about the money — obviously he’s hugely independently wealthy as well as his war chest — but each of those donations is a vote. It’s a vote of confidence. It’s a vote of support.”
While the Upton poll claims a lead and nearly a third in Obama crossover votes, O’Brien’s own polling shows that where he gains exposure, he is also gains undecided votes.
Bottomline on Polls: To Know Upton is to Vote for O’Brien
One can tell a lot about a man by his friends - Fred’s are now in DC, not Southwest Michigan, and on the ground O'Brien is making quite a few
Going back to the recent polling by Myers Research on October 3-4, 2012, if voters can get the message from the Obrien campaign and have the right information on Upton full record, including local, hot button environmental like fracking and oil pipeline leaks, O’Brien gets the edge over Upton:
By the conclusion of the survey, after voters admittedly hear an unbalance amount of information critical of Upton’s tenure in Congress, O’Brien leads by 4 point, 49 to 45 percent, again within this survey’s margin of error.
Earlier this week the
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has listed the
Upton vs OBrien contest as an “Emerging Race”, but it still remains to be seen if the locally funded O’Brien camp will get a fraction of the support Upton has already received and continues to get from outside SuperPACs, industry lobbies, and other national and special interest groups.
Whether or not voters in this district pay attention to such polls or not, or whether local issues and concerns, such as fracking and oil spills in which many have a personal stake, are enough to sway the recent traditionally moderate to conservative leaning district more to the center, the fact is the gap between challenger Mike O’Brien and and the 26-year Republican Fred Upton incumbent is closing.
READ the FULL INTERVIEW of Mike O’Brien posted on October 18, 2012 on Michigan’s own Eclectablog. O’Brien talks about the race tightening, several emerging issues in the campaign, parallels between Upton and Mitt Romney, and his next debate with Upton.
Visit Mike O'Brien for Congress or like Mike on Facebook.
Support Mike O’Brien for Congress HERE or on Act Blue HERE.
UPDATE POSTED: MI-06 Who is the “New” Fred Upton? Debates with Mike O’Brien Reveal Much in MI 6th District (October 26, 2012)
Disclaimer: The authors of this post are not employed by or members of the O’Brien campaign and it is an independent piece not endorsed by the candidate or campaign staff. Full disclosure - however, one contributor did taste one of Mike's organic chickens for Christmas once... it was great.