Crunching Derek Bailey campaign’s numbers
By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor
Our online story yesterday about a poll released by the Derek Bailey campaign that reportedly puts him in the lead one week before the Democratic primary apparently ruffled a few feathers, and raised questions, among Leelanau County Democrats.
Bailey, former chair of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians who is making his first (non-native) run for political office, is battling fellow Democrat Allen O’Shea for the right to take on incumbent Republican Ray Franz in the race to represent Michigan’s 101 district. Bailey dropped his U.S. Congressional primary bid last fall when it became clear that Democratic insider Gary McDowell was out-fundraising him by a 10-1 margin.
Deep Blue Strategies, the pollster that conducted last month’s survey which reportedly favored Bailey over O’Shea, was an unknown entity to local Democrats — and boasted no online footprint. Through Bailey’s campaign director Dave Seman, we tracked down Rudi Patitucci, a Harvard graduate and Chicago native who owns the firm Deep Blue Strategies, and the Glen Arbor Sun acquired the statistical results of that poll.
The poll relied on an automated robo-call to 9,000 households (approximately 12,000 voters) of historically Democratic-voting residents in Michigan’s 101st district on July 1-2 and 8-9. According to Patitucci, the “numbers were redialed over the course of four days until over 17,000 attempts resulted in 400 ‘completed’ surveys” in which all 22 questions were answered.
After hearing a series of positive statements about Bailey, his tribal experience and his family life, 43.45 percent of those polled told the robo-caller they would vote for Bailey in the primary, versus 35.95 percent for O’Shea. The call also tallied 74.05 percent of Democratic voters favoring Bailey over Republican Ray Franz in the general election, versus 67.83 percent favoring O’Shea. From that, Bailey’s campaign surmised that he holds the best shot among Democratic voters at unseating Franz.
However, another interpretation may be that Bailey enjoys wider name recognition than O’Shea, or that Democratic voters in his camp are more enthusiastic about beating Franz than O’Shea supporters are. Earlier in the robo-call, when asked their opinion on certain candidates, over half of the voters didn’t recognize O’Shea’s name, versus 35 percent who didn’t recognize Bailey’s name.
Bailey campaign apologizes for newspaper masthead mailer
Leelanau County Democrats recently received a misleading mailer from the Bailey campaign that used cut-out mastheads of the Glen Arbor Sun, the Leelanau Enterprise and the Native News Network, with this quote that appeared in the Native News Network’s coverage: “voters believe Bailey is the candidate best suited to solidify the Democratic base, a key factor in an election year where high voter turnout will be essential to winning any campaign.”
Some recipients interpreted the mailer as implying that the Sun and Enterprise had endorsed Bailey, which is factually inaccurate. The Glen Arbor Sun does not, and will not, endorse any candidates for political office, though it may on occasion run feature stories about them — as we did last fall, when Bailey was running for U.S. Congress. Enterprise publisher Alan Campbell confirmed that the Bailey campaign also did not seek that newspaper’s permission to use its banner before the mailer was sent.
“We didn’t want to give the impression of an endorsement,” Bailey campaign manager Dave Seman told the Sun, while offering an apology. “The goal was just to put logos on there of publications that have provided coverage. Our intent there was to show that, from the tip of the Leelanau peninsula down throughout the district, people are talking about this race.”
