Brad Anderson
Iowa's secretary of state race features a Republican candidate, Paul Pate, who wants to make it harder to vote, and a Democratic candidate, Brad Anderson, who wants to make Iowa number one in voter turnout. A pretty typical contrast between a Democratic and a Republican secretary of state candidate, in other words. The race is tight, too, according to a recent poll from USA Today/Suffolk University, which showed Pate with just a one-point lead, while nearly a third of voters are undecided. But now Pate's campaign is pushing back in truly hilarious fashion.
According to an internal poll, Pate is leading not by one point but by 10. But the devil is in the details:
Additionally, the respondents to the new VE poll said that they prefer “former Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate who supports a new voter identification law to former Obama campaign director Brad Anderson who opposes a new voter identification law 45.17 percent – 34.8 percent with still 20.04 percent undecided.
It's hard to believe any pollster would bother asking that question, or that any campaign would bother releasing it, but the quotation marks suggest that Pate's campaign really did have its pollster ask about "former Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate who supports a new voter identification law to former Obama campaign director Brad Anderson who opposes a new voter identification law." As opposed to, you know, the information voters will actually see on the ballot.
Brad Anderson wants more Iowans to vote. Isn't that worth $3 to help him win this close race for secretary of state?
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I'd look forward to the Anderson campaign answering by releasing a poll asking about "Paul Pate, who was fined in 1998 for using the office of secretary of state for partisan purposes, and Brad Anderson, who will offer all voters a free kitten," except I'm sure Anderson has better things to spend money on, like GOTV efforts.