| Siena Poll shows Councilman Corey Ellis within reach of Mayor Jerry Jennings
The Times Union has reported the findings of the recent Siena poll of the public in the days before the Democratic Primary for Mayor of Albany. The report summarizes the poll and reporter Jordan Carleo-Evangelist provides some insight as to the findings:
With just three days left before Tuesday's Democratic primary, Ellis trails Jennings, a four-term incumbent, by 21 percentage points -- 54 percent to 33 percent -- with 13 percent of voters undecided, according to a Siena Research Institute poll of 848 likely voters released Friday.
The TU headline reads "Poll Shows Mayor Ahead", which many readers will quickly point out reads slightly differently than that of this post. This is due to the swell of support the Ellis campaign is gaining in the final days before the primary. While the Hearst-owned paper has yet to give its nod to either candidate, the independent press has delievered a resounding endorsement for the Councilman's challenge against the 4-term incumbent:
Sixteen years ago, when the brash, outsider alderman, the loudest critic of City Hall, won a surprise victory against an established leader of the Democratic Party machine, the win was heralded as the end of the political culture that dominated Albany for more than half a century-a culture of backroom dealing, thuggish voter manipulation and cronyism. Sixteen years later, many of the trappings of the machine's power that were supposedly eliminated in a wave of reform have reemerged, and the onetime outsider and reformer-Jerry Jennings-directs a secretive administration from his corner office. Without term limits, Democracy suffers. And it suffers here in Albany. Sixteen years is long enough. It is time to clean out the halls of city power, to bring in new voices, new ideas, new vision, and new leaders. And there is no way better to start this era of reform than with the election of Corey Ellis.
More on the numbers and the strength of the Ellis campaign below the fold... |
The Carleo-Evangelist report begins in print on page A1 today, complete with a pie-chart which would imply Jerry Jennings has his re-election pretty well wrapped up. The report tends to focus first on how these numbers spell trouble for the the Ellis campaign:
And while the Ellis campaign questions the accuracy of the figures compared to its own assessments based on in-person contact with voters, the pollster says there may be an even more alarming trend for the challenger.
Among likely Democratic voters who identify themselves as African-American, the poll found Ellis leads Jennings by single digits -- 42 percent to 34 percent. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.
"As a candidate, when you don't have a commanding lead in your base, that's problematic," said Steven Greenberg, a spokesman for the Siena Research Institute, based at Siena College in Colonie.
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In 2005, when Jennings soundly defeated challenger Archie Goodbee, who is also black, the mayor won two of the city's so-called lower wards -- the First through Fifth -- and came within 50 votes of Goodbee in two others. Those wards stretch from the South End to Arbor and West Hill.Goodbee's campaign was not as organized as Ellis', which has wide progressive support, but it reveals the terrain Ellis must navigate to win.
"Unless Corey does very well in those wards, he's not going to beat Jennings," Mikulka acknowledged. But he added: "There's absolutely no way to win the race without taking votes from across the city."
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According to Greenberg, the poll may also reveal another troubling scenario for Ellis.
Of the eight issues voters were asked to rank in importance, they gave Jennings a double-digit edge when it comes to addressing six of them: crime, property taxes, education, economic development, safer schools and parking problems, leaving "no clear-cut issue for him to attack the mayor on," Greenberg said.
After reading that, one might argue my own choice of headline is misleading and the TU has got theirs right on the money. Why even pay attention, then? Well, I'm not here to argue the big paper was unbalanced. Within the story, there are some nuggets of information that I believe hold more weight when it comes to actually getting supporters of change and progressive causes into voting booths. It has to do with the Ellis campaign's response to the initial, mainstream-media-style analysis. What these reveal is a confidence firmly grounded in reality coming from someone who has beat these kind of odds before:
But if Ellis' campaign was sweating the numbers Friday, it wasn't letting on.
"If that's the number on Election Day, yes, I'd be concerned," said Ellis spokesman Justin Mikulka. "But I think we're going to see very different numbers on Election Day."
Ellis' campaign believes only 16,000 of the city's 38,000 Democrats will vote in Tuesday's primary. Mikulka said the campaign's door-to-door effort, which has been hyper-focused on those voters -- wherever they are in the city -- has revealed much broader support for the 38-year-old councilman from the Third Ward.
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On the other two issues polled, voters gave the mayor a slight edge when it comes to dealing with neighborhood issues and rated Ellis and Jennings at 44 percent apiece when it comes to reforming city government.
The poll numbers showed at least one apparent vindication of Ellis' platform: Likely Democratic voters overwhelmingly oppose the proposed downtown convention center, for which Jennings has been a high-profile booster. Ellis has opposed it from the outset.
Emphasis added. -SP
The two emphasized points just don't look italic enough to me given their importance. And it amazes me how an entirely different conclusion can be made from a news story simply by cutting and pasting paragraphs into a different order.
The Ellis campaign is spot on point. This is a relatively small primary in the grand scheme of things. Many here will testify that it's the ground game that matters in a race like that. Such things certainly aren't won with television advertising. This is the route Mayor Jennings is currently taking; I've seen both of his two spots several times already, and I live out in the west of Albany County. That should have people from the Catskills to the Adirondacks wondering just how much Mayor Jennings is paying per vote to keep his seat, not just his own constituents.
The second point, before we explore the Metroland endorsement, is the convention center. While many of the other issues were relatively close, this one has been big for a while now. Put simply from my point of view, the convention center is bad deal for all of Albany County and the city of Albany especially. The number of abandoned buildings has gone steadily up throughout the Mayor's 16 years in office; Councilman Ellis has been leading the charge to rid the city of them for the past four. Any urban dweller in New York State needs no explanation that these vacant buildings fast become breeding pools for violent crime, also up in Albany.
Clearly, the Mayor's support for the project can only be due to his ties to big money developers and his desire to boost political capital through big name projects. Corey Ellis knows otherwise; he seems to understand that a city is only as great as it's worst block, and believes that these are the kinds of improvements residents really need. No ritzy new hotel will not stop drugs being dealt out of empty inner-city houses, no fancy arena will halt illegal guns flowing in and out of them.
This is the single issue that sets Ellis apart from Jennings, and it's why Mr. Greenberg's analysis of this portion of the poll is incorrect. Numbers like that in an election like this reveal to me that Corey Ellis is within range and Mayor Jennings is the one sweating the numbers. While this isn't the first year they've endorsed an opponent of his, Thursday's endorsement of Corey Ellis for Mayor by Metroland would have me sweating if I was the Mayor. No other piece in print paints a clearer picture of how Albany Democrats should cast their ballots this Tuesday:
Sixteen years ago, when the brash, outsider alderman, the loudest critic of City Hall, won a surprise victory against an established leader of the Democratic Party machine, the win was heralded as the end of the political culture that dominated Albany for more than half a century-a culture of backroom dealing, thuggish voter manipulation and cronyism. Sixteen years later, many of the trappings of the machine's power that were supposedly eliminated in a wave of reform have reemerged, and the onetime outsider and reformer-Jerry Jennings-directs a secretive administration from his corner office. Without term limits, Democracy suffers. And it suffers here in Albany. Sixteen years is long enough. It is time to clean out the halls of city power, to bring in new voices, new ideas, new vision, and new leaders. And there is no way better to start this era of reform than with the election of Corey Ellis.
Ellis' years as a union organizer have left a deep impression on the 38-year-old councilman. A natural leader with an impressive gift for rallying disparate troops, Ellis has proven a boldness of vision that inspires and challenges the status quo. His 2005 Common Council victory over machine incumbent Michael Brown is a testament to hard work and belief in the future of the city. Losing by only a handful of votes in the Democratic Primary, Ellis mounted a general election campaign on the Working Families Party line and succeeded at something most people told him would be impossible.
As councilman for the 3rd Ward, Ellis defined himself as a leading voice for the progressive movement in Albany. Early on, he tackled the issue of abandoned buildings that cripple the city and his ward. He advocated for public-access television and charter reform. He joined Councilman Dominick Calsolaro in raising the alarm over the Rapp Road Landfill, which the administration had no plan to deal with. Most impressively, it was Ellis' relentless advocacy for an investigation into the system of no-fine parking tickets that initiated two investigations-one mounted by the council itself-and uncovered a decades-long swindle that had robbed the city of untold revenue.
Ellis is challenging a mayor who has led the city into numerous crises. The city's budget shortfall is estimated as likely to reach $20 million by 2012. The landfill's expansion into the city's ecological treasure, the Pine Bush Reserve, is a tragedy that could have been avoided. The mayor's appointment and unyielding support of Police Chief James Tuffey-his fifth chief in 16 years-has robbed the city of vital community policing. Both the mayor and chief have proven themselves incapable of controlling the waves of violent crime and gun violence that terrorize Albany neighborhoods. Jennings' push for an unneeded and ill-conceived convention center speaks volumes about his lack of vision for the city-and his proffering of costly construction contracts to his friends in the business world. Jennings has touted entertainment over infrastructure, ignored the abandoned buildings that blight neighborhoods and cripple the city. He has failed to create neighborhoods that people want to live in, giving state workers a city to come to for work and for drinks, but not a city where they want to raise their children.
If there is to be real reform in Albany, if the progressive movement is to have an opportunity to define a new vision for our city, then we must win the mayor's seat on Sept. 15. We strongly support Corey Ellis for mayor, and urge our readers to give him the opportunity to chart a new course.
If any of the above convinced any of you that Corey Ellis is worth supporting, please don't sit at your screen any longer than it takes to visit coreyellis2009.com to make whatever small contribution you can or sign up to volunteer. One man can only do so much, and Corey Ellis is doing everything he can and more. Hell, I've been out of work since January and live thirty miles outside the city limits, but I'm going to find away to get into the city to help Corey Ellis before this thing passes. Because with a race this tight, even a little help can go a very long way towards fighting the good fight...and actually winning. |
