Cross-Posted from MoreMonmouthMusings.com (9/25/12)
Last week Kyrillos for U.S. Senate campaign manager Chapin Fay said the campaign planned to win every county that Chris Christie won in 2009, plus Bergen County, which Christie narrowly lost.
Kyrillos will need to comeback stronger than Bucky Dent’s 1978 Yankees in order for that to happen, if the Monmouth University-Gannett poll released this morning in on the mark. U.S. Senator Bob Menendez has widened his lead over Kyrillos from 9 points in July to 15 points today.
“I’m the moderate in this race,” Kyrillos declared to just under 2000 Bergen County Republican and Independent voters on a tele-town hall last week. While his message seemed to resonate with participants on the call who expressed their concerns for jobs, the skyrocketing national debt and gridlock in Washington, Kyillos’s message that he is ” a different kind of Republican,” as he is called in one of his TV ads, does not seem to be landing with Independents throughout the state who now favor Menendez 42% to 26%. In a July Monmouth poll, Kyrillos and Menendez were tied among Independents at 32% each.
President Obama’s coattails seem to be the determining factor in the U.S. Senate race. Obama was always expected to win New Jersey, but the Kyrillos camp believed that if Obama’s margin of victory was less than 10%, that Menendez could be beaten. Obama is widened his lead in New Jersey from 8 points in July to 15 points today, according to the poll.
Did he every have a chance?
No.