Towards the end of this Fort Bend Now story on the weekend campaign activities in Fort Bend, we get this tantalizing tidbit from Shelley Sekula-Gibbs:
Sekula-Gibbs said she will reveal “very good polling numbers” next week in comparison with Lampson.
I can’t wait to see them, and to see what her definition of “very good polling numbers” will be. More importantly, I’d love to know how her pollster phrased the questions. Remember, you can’t simply list the candidates and their party affiliation and hope to get a good result here. Shelley is neither the Republican candidate, nor is she on the ballot. (Except for the Very Special Election, of course, for which it’s not in her interest to leave the impression that that’s the vote she really needs.) How do you solicit information about whether or not someone even knows there’s a write-in choice, let alone that they are willing and able to write her in, without pointing it out to them first? You don’t, of course, so I presume that if this poll purports to measure anything, it’s that if given full information and sufficient prompting, some respectable number of people will say they’ll write in Shelley’s name. Which I suppose could be doable if Shelley had, oh, I don’t know, three million bucks or so to slosh around. How’s that working out for you, Shelley?
Sekula-Gibbs said her campaign could use funding “to help with TV” ads.
Mmm hmmm. I’ll bet it could.
But she said she’ll rely on an extensive mailing list to generate multiple mailings as part of an educational campaign, to get her name before the Republican voting base and to show them the write-in process.
How many mailings do you think she’ll send out, and at what cost? I’m more curious than sarcastic here – I’d genuinely like to know what someone thinks is the minimum number of mailings needed to educate and persuade enough voters to win.
She said she expects Lampson to employ significant television advertising, adding, “if you hear stuff on TV about Shelley that makes your hair stand up,” it’s not true.
If you hear anything about Shelley on TV at all, it won’t be coming from the Lampson campaign. The last thing in the world he needs to do is put her name out there for the voters to hear. Same with the DCCC, assuming they still intend to put money into this race. Only Shelley will be talking about Shelley. We here in Houston are already used to that.
UPDATE: Juanita has more on Shelley’s poll.
Jaunita has a post from yesterday that SSG was running a push poll over the weekend, so that may be the poll she is talking about.