Did Adler Staff Create Fake Tea Party Candidate?
Posted on 16 August 2010
Looks like there is trouble brewing in the Adler campaign. Former Eagle John Runyan is running against John Adler in the 3rd district House race. And for the past two weeks, the accusations have been flying at Adler’s campaign. From the Press of Atlantic City:
Mount Laurel resident Peter DeStefano caused an outpouring of accusations and finger pointing when he turned up in an internal poll released by Adler’s campaign under the slogan “New Jersey Tea Party.” Members of the various tea party organizations disavowed DeStefano.
“Peter DeStefano is not, and I emphasize — not — a tea party candidate, by any stretch. He is a shill for someone else, but certainly not what the tea party stands for,” Bill Haney, the founder of the West Jersey Tea Party — which covers Burlington, Camden and Gloucester counties, said last week.
“DeStefano is not a member of the West Jersey Tea Party, the Ocean County Citizens for Freedom, the Ocean County Tea Party or any other tea party group in the state. I know because I checked the rosters of all the organizations.”
And what is all the fuss about?
Runyan’s staff has publicly cast doubt that DeStefano’s campaign is legitimate.
“Evidence clearly shows that Peter DeStefano is a fraud candidate and people close to Adler planted him on the ballot. His petitions were notarized by politically active Democrat lawyers and signed by former Adler staffers and campaign contributors,” Chris Russell, a spokesman for Runyan, said Thursday. “That’s why all the local tea party groups in the district have disavowed DeStefano’s candidacy and believe he was planted in this race by Adler’s team to mislead voters and split the conservative vote.”
Many people think that it is far fetched the a candidate would create a third party candidate to complete against themselves and split the other side. We are not so sure. We asked similar questions during the Corzine campaign when the governor who could not poll higher than 42 percent for months suddenly had a “legitimate” third party candidate funded by the traditionally Democrat donors from the financial industry. But the question is probably not whether or not Adler did it. The question is why? If he is so confident in his seat he wouldn’t need a shill to split Runyan’s vote. Or does this suggest that Adler’s internal polling is telling the campaign something that we don’t know yet? Or do we? From the August 10 Rutgers-Eagleton Poll press announcement:
With third party candidate Peter DeStefano included, Adler leads 31 percent to 25 percent, while
DeStefano polls at 4 percent, and 34 percent say “don’t know”. Another 6 percent say they will
not vote in the Congressional race. Without DeStefano on the ballot, Adler leads Runyan 35
percent to 28 percent, with 23 percent don’t know and 13 percent not voting.
So if I read this correctly, a sitting House member can only poll 36% without a third party candidate thrown in? I always thought that incumbents can not consistently poll above 50% this early, it spells trouble. Hmmmm.
Press of Atlantic City article here, Rutgers Eagleton poll press release here.
1 Response to Did Adler Staff Create Fake Tea Party Candidate?
[...] 39% and 42% is polls leading up to this one. It may explain the motivation we commented on in this post(and this one, and this one) that Adler may have put up a fake tea party candidate to make it [...]