Mendoza Reports Closing on Garamendi Lead in Calif. Commissioner Race

A preliminary Field Poll conducted in August revealed the race for California Insurance Commissioner is tightening up.

The poll, which was conducted by an independent public opinion news service called the Field Institute, measured many aspects of the voters’ likeliness to vote for candidates, including favorable and unfavorable awareness.

Republican candidate Gary Mendoza garnered 35 percent of voter preferences for the California Insurance Commissioner race, while Democratic candidate John Garamendi collected 40 percent. Twenty-five percent were undecided.

The breakdown by political affiliation revealed Mendoza’s 35 percent is split with 56 percent of Republican votes, and 18 percent Democratic. Twenty-eight percent comprised the other category, which was based on a small sample base.

Garamendi garnered 62 percent of Democratic votes, and 17 percent Republican. He also collected 32 percent of votes from the other category.

Further results gauging favorable versus unfavorable image revealed overall 17 percent of voters hold a favorable image to Mendoza, while 14 percent voted unfavorable. 69 percent had no opinion. 35 percent of voters have a favorable image of Garamendi, while 16 percent have an unfavorable image. 49 percent have no opinion.

Mendoza campaign consultant Kevin Spillane told Insurance Journal regarding the results, “The poll was extremely good news for the Mendoza campaign. When you consider that John Garamendi has run for statewide office in California four times previously, and that this is Mendoza’s first statewide campaign, it’s a sign of real trouble for the Garamendi campaign. It shows that Garamendi support is extremely soft, and it reconfirms private polling that we’ve seen over the last several months that has shown Mendoza gaining on Garamendi.

“We now have a five-point rate, which is within the field poll margin of errors, and Garamendi is frankly, in a weaker position than Art Torres was in 1994 against Chuck Quackenbush,” added Spillane. “In the field poll of late September of 1994, Torres was ahead of Quackenbush by 10 points, 35 to 25 percent.

“What was interesting, was that the poll showed that Mendoza, of all the other Republican candidates for partisan office, was receiving more Democratic support than the other Republicans, and was doing the best among independent voters. In a close election, independent voters are obviously a key part of the swing vote, and the fact that Mendoza is running so strongly with those voters, this early on, is a positive sign,” said Spillane.

Garamendi press liaison Lee Fink told Insurance Journal, “We’re very happy to be ahead.

“John has some of the strongest favorable ratings of any statewide candidate. He has the strongest Republican support of any statewide Democratic nominee. So we’re very happy where we are and we’re going to continue to run a campaign about the issues and we’re confident that we’ll succeed because the voters are concerned with the issues and want to see an Insurance Commissioner that has experience and can provide leadership to the Department.

“We’re confident that Democrats will vote for John Garamendi as they have when he was first elected to Insurance Commissioner,” added Fink.

“We’re comfortable where we’re at. We’re ahead, and we intend to talk about the issues, and let voters know that John is running for office and that he is trying to return integrity to the Department of Insurance, and clean up in the wake of the Quackenbush scandal, and work hard for insurance consumers in the state of California, and the polls show that we’re leading in that race now, and we’re confident that come November we’ll continue to lead because of a proven record of success in the Department of Insurance,” said Fink.

The poll results can be viewed at http://field.com/fieldpollonline/subscribers/RLS2052.pdf.

Topics California