Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed official guest host and lead political reporter for The Tennessee Star Aaron Gulbransen in-studio to discuss the recent polling done by The Tennessee Journal‘s On the Hill blog, showing Democrat Heidi Campbell improbably leading Republican Andy Ogles by three points in the open 5th Congressional District race.
Leahy: We are joined in-studio by the official guest host of The Tennessee Star Report and our lead political reporter at The Tennessee Star, the man who spent about 20 years managing various political campaigns and spent some time as a producer for Sean Hannity for a year or so. Aaron, it’s a quiet period in Tennessee politics, isn’t it?
Gulbransen: It’s so weird. Good morning, by the way. It’s so weird right now because there was a zillion things going on for months and months and months, and it seems like a quiet week for once.
Leahy: And basically here’s what happened. There was a lot going on. It all kind of centered around the GOP primary in the newly created 5th Congressional District.
Gulbransen: Right.
Leahy: And then it’s sort of anti-climactic, I suppose you could say, because first, Andy Ogles stomped the competition on primary day and won by 11, 12 points. It was like 37 to 26 over Beth Harwell, and then General Winstead, 22 percent. And that was August 4th, almost three weeks ago.
Gulbransen: It feels like it’s three months ago.
Leahy: It feels like forever, because the primary race with the whole Robby Starbuck carpetbagger thing and the Morgan Ortagus carpetbagger thing, and then whether they’d be on the ballot or off the ballot. Ultimately they were off the ballot. That just was a dominant national story for a long time.
We thought, or I thought that – before the election, you and I were chatting a little bit about who would win, and I said, I thought Andy would probably win by, like, two or three points. Well, he won! I was right about that. But the margin of victory was very dramatic.
Gulbransen: It’s a new district. What I always say after an election, obviously, it’s like Monday morning quarterbacking, but the results of an election tell you more about the district than they really tell you about the field.
And what the results of that primary tell me is, if you go out and spend, between your outside groups and all that sort of thing, you can spend 4 or $5 million, you can go get the Republican nomination in Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District. (Laughter)
Leahy: The funny thing about, most of that came from outside groups for Andy, and that was obviously a bit controversial. What’s interesting about this – so everything’s been quiet, but there is a Democratic candidate running in that race. Her name is State Senator Heidi Campbell.
She’s a far-left lunatic as they are, all are, but she presents herself as not a lunatic. I suppose we ought to invite her on. I doubt that she’d come onto the program.
But our first question is, would you have voted for the ‘Inflation Reduction Act?’ And the answer would be “yes.” And then we’ll say, you really are a left-wing lunatic.
Gulbransen: Yeah, exactly.
Leahy: But anyways, I don’t know. When you say something like that, true as it may be, it’s not exactly going to encourage somebody to come on the program, right? (Chuckles)
Gulbransen: No, probably not. Also, due to the fact that I’ve seen all the marketing material she puts out with her campaign, I feel like she would not enjoy her time in this studio.
Leahy: Well, we’d be polite.
Gulbransen: Yes.
Leahy: We’re always polite, but we do point out facts. Now, there was nothing going on, so we had the first little hint of some political activity. “Grain of salt” is a way to look at this. On The Tennessee Journal On the Hill site that former AP reporter Erik Schelzig, who’s pretty much a lefty, put together. He said, “An internal poll conducted by Democrat Heidi Campbell shows leading Republican Andy Ogles by three points in the open 5th Congressional District race. The poll was comprised of 1,622 respondents … .”
And there’s no description of the methodology here. Well, they claim this group, Frederick Polls, “care was taken to represent the geographic and demographic divisions of the expected electorate based on past voter turnout statistics.” What they did – we haven’t seen the poll, but they basically said, pretend this is the old 5th. (Laughs) Alright?
Gulbransen: I can tell you the key thing on here. There are a number of things that I can – I mean, once upon a time, I used to destroy polls all the time. And they focused on “persuadable voters” in this thing without telling us how many persuadable voters there are. Okay, so out of the five persuadable voters in the district, 54 percent.
Leahy: Yes. They claimed a 51-48 lead, which is basically a margin of error. The press release says “findings among persuadable voters.” Is this an interview of persuadable voters in the district, which is a very tiny, tiny group?
Gulbransen: This is a subset of a larger data set. That’s what they’re saying. And who knows, even if they conducted the poll itself accurately, but what they’re focusing on is say this is an R plus-8 to an R plus-12 district, based on who you’re looking at.
Leahy: I just got a memo from Baker Group Strategies. Basically, he confirms all that stuff.
Gulbransen: So there you go. If someone would know, it would be Baker Group Strategies. But that’s what they do with these things. They always play games with this data. And when you see a real poll result, it’s Donald Trump 55 …
And I’m just making this up off the top of my head. Donald Trump 55, Joe Biden 45, 43 percent undecided. And so what they’re citing in this memo that Heidi Campbell’s campaign did is, of the 2 percent undecided, in my fake example there, these are what percentage of people don’t like Andy Ogles or blah blah blah blah blah?
So they’re focusing on that. I mean, the bottom line here is, like it or not, Andy Ogles is going to be the congressman. He’s got the nomination. Whoever won the nomination was going to be the congressman.
Ultimately, the only thing that could possibly change that, given the makeup of the new district, is whether suddenly somebody goes to jail, which that’s not likely yet.
Leahy: No. But here’s what’s interesting about this. It does show that at least the Democrats are going to mount some kind of campaign. This is the very first thing that’s happened in that district.
Gulbransen: Yes. This poll that we’re discussing is a desperate attempt to raise more money.
Leahy: What they’re trying to say is – and if you look at the details of this, it’s phony, phony, phony.
Gulbransen: Yes.
Leahy: Because, by the way, they just put a memo out. They didn’t release anything. (Laughter) They didn’t release anything about this at all. Some of our friends are texting us, talking about how fake this thing is.
I’m getting a whole bunch of funny texts about how fake this thing is. I think you’re exactly right. What is this about? This is Heidi Campbell trying to raise money. That’s what this is.
Listen to the discussion:
– – –
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
