SurveyUSA continues its tour of Minnesota’s competitive congressional districts on behalf of KSTP, and they give Team Blue some good news in the suburban 2nd District. Democrat Angie Craig leads Republican Jason Lewis 46-41, while Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump 44-36. Obama won this seat by only about 0.1 percent in 2012, but this is the type of affluent and well-educated district where Trump is bad news for his party. Note that the poll did not test Independence Party nominee Paula Overby, a left-leaning congressional candidate who took 5 percent here in 2014.
Craig and her allies have badly outspent Team Red here, and they’ve aired several ads using recordings of Lewis' many racist and sexist comments against him. One sample quote from Lewis, a former conservative radio host, that’s made it to a Democratic ad: “You’ve got a vast majority of young single women who couldn’t explain to you what GDP means. You know what they care about? They care about abortion. They care about abortion and gay marriage. They care about The View. They are non-thinking.” While the DCCC has continued to advertise here, their allies at House Majority PAC recently cut much of their planned ad campaign, a strong sign that they felt good about Craig’s chances.
However, while this poll gives Craig a lead, it indicates that this contest is far from over. Indeed, the NRCC recently released a poll showing Lewis up 36-33, while Craig dropped a survey in response giving her a 46-42 edge. (Craig’s poll was done in early October, before the tape of Trump bragging about sexual assault was released.) The NRCC recently began running commercials against Craig, and they’re now out with a new one that aims to use Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton’s words against her.
The narrator first insists that Craig is just using Lewis’s words out of context in her spots. (No, Lewis’s words aren’t any less vile in context.) They quickly transition to a clip of Craig saying she would expand the Affordable Care Act. The commercial then shows Dayton saying, “The Affordable Care Act is no longer affordable.” Dayton called for actually doing more to improve the program. You’ll be shocked, shocked! to learn that the NRCC doesn’t actually care about putting people’s quotes in context. The group recently allocated $535,000 to this race, though they have another $2.9 million reserved that they could send here or to another competitive Minnesota seat.
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