In one of the sleeper races of the season, our Netroots candidate Larry Grant is hard at work to turn ID-01 blue again. And, judging by internal polling from a few weeks ago that was recently released, there's good
reason to believe (subscription required).
"The race to fill the open seat in Idaho's 1st Congressional District is wide-open and either candidate can win at this time," crowed Democratic pollster Celinda C. Lake in a memo circulating Washington, D.C., to raise money.
Her firm, Lake Research Partners, sampled 400 likely voters for former Micron vice president Larry Grant, a Democrat from Fruitland, who is
running against state Rep. Bill Sali, R-Kuna. The pair seek to replace U.S. Rep. C. L. (Butch) Otter, R-Idaho.
The poll found 34 percent of voters favored Sali; 28 percent favored Grant (sampling error 4.9 percent).
Those numbers make a lot more sense than the crazy (although apparently methodologically sound) poll released last month by Greg Smith, an Idaho GOP pollster. And it confirms the high number of undecideds in the race. But a Republican in Idaho running in the low 30's really is remarkable. He's caused a lot of Republicans to question whether to just sit this one out, or to to the unthinkable and vote Democratic.
As word gets out about the little FEC problem facing Sali, they could become convinced.
They have a chance to find out more tomorrow morning at the ungodly hour of 6:00 a.m. Mountain (that's a more reasonable 8:00 for folks on the east coast) to hear them debate on the radio and streamed online. Red State Rebel will be liveblogging (that intrepid soul) at Grassroots for Grant.
One more little tidbit about this race to whet your appetite, in the print edition of The Hill, (not online, sorry) they identified this as one of the 60 most competitive House races to keep an eye on. Idaho. Who'd have thunk?