Poll Deficits Don't Discourage Florida's Conservative Senate Candidate
by Chad Groening
September 20, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A conservative Florida congresswomen says she has overcome adversity before, so she's not concerned about what critics say about her Senate campaign against a Democratic incumbent. In fact, Katherine Harris has been moving up in the polls after her recent GOP primary victory. Prior to the primary win, critics derided Harris' campaign as spectacularly inept, and some in the Florida GOP wanted to distance themselves from the former Florida secretary of state who became a national figure during the 2000 presidential campaign. But Harris says she proved the critics wrong.
"And we did it with a far larger margin than anyone expected," she says in reference to the GOP primary. "So we're very gratified, and grateful to the people of Florida."
Now Harris clearly faces an uphill battle against the first-term Nelson, who had 30-point leads in some polls. The Republican candidate believes the liberal media is trying to use those poll numbers to discourage values voters from coming out on Election Day 2006.
"Clearly, these things that they say are just in the hopes that they'll make it come true and to just try to discourage those who really want to cut taxes and have a great environment for families and marriages in the state of Florida or have an insurance rate that they can afford," says Harris. "All these kinds of issues that we fight for, Bill Nelson has voted against."
Harris points out she has picked up momentum, gaining nine points on Nelson to close the gap to less than 20 points. "Not that polls matter," she adds, "but they're the ones that quote the polls whenever they can make them sound bad. Then they'll use them as headlines; but you won't see much in the press now that I'm moving up so much."
It is evident that the conservative Republican does not let polls dampen her optimism. "Before, we've shown them. We were down 30 points in the polls when I was running against a Democrat state senator, and we won," she shares. "Then, I was down more than 30 points when I was running against the incumbent secretary of state, and we won with more than 20 points."
A recently completed poll by Survey USA showed Nelson with a 15-point lead over Harris with slightly less than six weeks before the election.
Chad Groening, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
