Gowdy Leads, Lee Close Behind in Fountain Inn Straw Poll

Last night, the Fountain Inn Chamber of Commerce and Fountain Inn Rotary Club hosted a fourth congressional debate with Myra Ruiz from WYFF moderating.  The results of the straw poll held after the debate are as follows (sections is in order of percent vote).

Trey Gowdy

Trey gathered 31% of the vote after the debate.  This is not all surprising as he has been working hard and building a lot of name recognition.  Of all the candidates, he has not been shy when it comes to attacking Inglis.  Given his fund raising totals and the perceived street cred obtained by those numbers, he may be in the final two.

Jim Lee

As the title says, Lee came in second with 27%.  This looks good for Jim and shows that his ground game and solid performance last week in the WORD radio debate is cashing in.  If Jim can continue to build this momentum, watch out.

David Thomas

I have been hearing rumors that Thomas’ Senate seat may be on the line if he performs poorly in his own district.  Unfortunately, for Thomas, polling in 3rd with 20% in his backyard could be the beginning of the end for him in politics.

Christina Jeffrey

Jeffrey brought in 15% after the Boiling Springs Tea Party issued a “Red Alert” call to action yesterday.  She is polling a little better than I expected.  We are waiting to see if the other Tea Parties will get behind her, but our sources say that is not likely.

Bob Inglis

Bob, Bob, Bob.  What else can we say than he brought in 7% of the vote.  Oh yeah, did we mention the democrats are likely not to vote in this election since they have multiple candidates in the governors race they covet so dearly?

You can read more at the Greenville News.

Event – Meet Trey Gowdy

If you would like to attend, please email me at george@treygowdy.com or 864.908.3775.

Trey is running for South Carolina’s fourth congressional district.

Common Sense Grandma Alienates Tea Party

There has been much bru ha ha over the past few days concerning the attempted take over of the Tea Party by the SCGOP, the agreement that was reached, and Chairman Floyd’s TV News stops promoting the deal.

According to Americans Have Had Enough and the Upcountry Coalition of Conservative Organizations press release, the agreement reached with the SCGOP was different from what was communicated to the national media outlets.  The terms of the original agreement can be found here.  You’ll have to decipher that one.

In response to the Upcountry Coalition, the Common Sense Grandma¹, Christina Jeffrey came out swinging at Russ Cassell, Roan Garcia-Quintana and others claiming they are republican haters to the same Tea Party leaders that support and rally around these individuals. Not a very smart move considering the voting base you are courting is that audience.

Guys, Roan Quintana, Kerry Wood, Russ Castle and Randy Simpson are GOP haters.

I think the guys above are agitating to beat the band and we should be careful. Not because I’m a candidate but because we will look bad as a movement if we beat people up unnecessarily. Listen to what she says – it’s just what Patrick said at the Greenville Exec Committee, not profound, not the way you or I would have said it, but not evil and not co-opting.

Even worse for Jeffrey, Cassell caught wind of this and aired her dirty laundry all over WORD (106.3) this morning.  We are still waiting for the highlights to be posted on NewsRadioWord.com, we’ll provide  a link when it becomes available.  NewsRadioWord Audio Link.

Sources indicate it was not a pretty morning for Jeffrey.  She was even referred to as “the nutty professor” a few times.  Ouch!

In my opinion, the entire premise and support base she built for this primary was completely obliterated this morning by trying to defend Karen Floyd’s statements.

Although it may have been the right thing to do, this may have killed any hope for a primary victory for Jeffrey in June.

UPDATE:
Reporting in from Greenville, the abusive behavior of a particular candidate consistently running into people as an intimidation tactic as returned.  It wouldn’t be so bad if you didn’t do it so often, repeatedly and inconsiderately.  We now have reports of this from the March for Life, Andre Bauer’s Christmas Party, Wade’s, and now Tommy’s Ham House.  You KNOW who you are!

UPDATE 2:
Jeffrey managed to squeeze her way to the front at the Press Conference today to get beside GOP Chairman Karen Floyd and wanted to speak.  As soon as she tried to speak, the crowd shouted her down, told her they didn’t want to hear anything else from her.  Supposedly, she yelled back before Kibler said let her talk.  She issued an apology.  In fairness, Quintana stated that since Jim Lee was in attendance, it was only fair he had an opportunity to speak to.

Bob Inglis

The Inglis campaign came out with a full frontal assault on Trey Gowdy this morning.

The Inglis campaign has filed ethical violations to the FEC and SC Ethics questioning Gowdy’s potential use of state campaign monies in his congressional race.  This story was broke by Jason Spencer at the Herald Journal.

Also, Inglis has begun what has been termed a “blitzkrieg” in Union County over the last week. I’m not sure Union is used to having this much attention for the congressional race.

David Thomas

Thomas campaigns ads have begun to be aired during news broadcast in the upstate this week.

¹ Common Sense Grandma was Jeffrey’s tag line for her 2008 election for SC House District 32

SC 4th Congressional Poll Results are in…

At midnight on February 5th, 2010, polling closed for our SC 4th Congressional District Poll.  It was open for a week and we had a variety of responses and general comments on the race.

We did our best to market the poll via Twitter and Facebook and other means to help promote each of the candidates fairly.  You can see screen shots below.

I would love to say that internet polling was accurate.  If that were the case Ron Paul would have been President.  Given the amount of traffic we received compared to the number of votes, I would hope this was a fair indication of the people in the 4th Congressional District.

Without further delay, here are the results…

36% – Jim Lee
18% – Trey Gowdy
18% – Bob Inglis
18% – Christina Jeffrey
07% – David Thomas

My biggest surprise is the indecisiveness for the potential runoff candidate.  With Gowdy, Inglis, and Jeffrey all tied for 2nd, this may be the largest battle.  Between these three candidates, you see the outside Ron Paul supporters backing Jeffrey who has been threatening to censor individuals recently on Facebook and a potential split between the establishment candidates of Inglis and Gowdy.

This is a race I have been looking forward to seeing play out and it will only get more interesting the closer we get to June.  What do you think about these results?

The Fightin’ Fourth Year End Update

In South Carolina’s most conservative district, the filing deadline has come and gone.

This cycle has seen the incumbent come out with the gloves off, taking on his challengers and pledging to debate as often as possible.  He even sent out one piece that seemingly endorsed another candidate in the race causing one campaign to call for Inglis to withdraw.  It has even become personal with some spouses getting in on the fun, taking jabs at other candidates or the candidate bullying the spouse.  You know who we are talking about candidates!

For transparency sake, I am volunteering on Jim Lee’s campaign.  As some of you may know, I have been one of Inglis’ biggest critics since I started The Conservativist.  Just ask Inglis, I am his biggest fan, all sarcasm is intended.

Lets take a look at the financial reports for the Fightin’ Fourth’s candidates (last reporting cycle only) and don’t forget to vote in our poll below.

Bob Inglis

Donors:  142
Contributions:  $122,599.13
Expenses:  $61,973.48
Cash on Hand:  $308,291.74

Of Inglis 142 donors, 18 of them are PAC contributions.  They include the NRA, GE (Inglis loves their wind turbines), Fraternity & Sorority PAC (is this where Bob learns how to sing and dance?), Duke Energy, Northrop Grumman, Microsoft, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Exxon.

Trey Gowdy

Donors:  143
Contributions:  $88,340
Expenses:  $64,011.95
Cash on Hand:  $204,649.74

It appears the Advance America and Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough PAC donated to his campaign.  Surprisingly not on his donor list is Barry Wynn, who appeared on Inglis’ donor list.  Trey is expected to have several cases coming up in the next months, so expect to see his ads more frequently over the airwaves as his campaign time will be limited.

Christina Jeffrey

Donors:  13
Contributions:  $10,391.00
Expenses:  $17,907.33
Cash on Hand:  $16,261.28

Of Jeffrey’s 13 donors, only four (4) of them are from within the district!?  She’s obtained money from Georgia, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, Michigan and more.  It comes as no surprise that Jeffrey Sewell is now consulting her campaign (look at the plugs she gets from SCHotline)  See FEC Data or with a timestamp for those who want to challenge my research.  What I do find interesting is that she is on her 4th or 5th consultant now.  She has paid Sewell and Cassidy from this cycle, Dark Horse Strategy, Saber Communications and Michael Thompson in previous cycles.

Jeffrey has paid Upstate Printing and Publishing ~$1,400.00 which is located at the same address as the Boiling Springs Tea Party, located at 278 Giles Dr. in Boiling Springs, SC.

Jim Lee

Donors: 11
Contributions:  $4,795.15
Expenses:  $2,787.88
Cash on Hand:  $4,146.73

Jim Lee’s funding is surprisingly down this quarter.  Lee’s candidacy is based on “We the People” meaning that he hasn’t been visiting with all of the big money donors in the area.  While working out of state on technology consulting projects, Lee has been knocking on doors and making phone calls to the electorate, building grassroots support.  The question remains whether or not this will result in votes come June.

We hear the campaign has a big announcement coming, but we don’t know any details at this time.

David Thomas

Donors:  36
Contributions:  $30,739.00
Expenses:  $27,789.32
Cash on Hand:  $91,173.66

Of all the candidates, Thomas is the only one with pending debt, $4,243.83.  We have learned in the last few weeks, validated with FEC data, that Richard Quinn & Associates is advising on his campaign.  FEC data shows it as polling data, but it will be interesting if the Quinn machine will come barreling through with large sums of money in the next few weeks.  At least we know we will see pro-Thomas materials on The Palmetto Scoop.

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