Greenberg Quinlan Rosner has released a new poll showing Nick Leibham well-positioned to knock off xenophobe Brian Bilbray in CA-50.

A building Democratic wave is about to hit San Diego beaches. The campaign of former prosecutor Nick Leibham is surging, and Leibham is now in a statistical dead heat with incumbent Republican Congressman Brian Bilbray, 42 to 44 percent.

Key Findings

Leibham launched an extremely effective and aggressive mail and television advertising blitz against Bilbray that features a four-star general criticizing Bilbray’s vote against the G.I. Bill. As a result, Leibham has pulled into a statistical tie with the incumbent (42 to 44 percent) after trailing by 19 points (35 to 54 percent) as recently as August.

Barack Obama is also running strong in California’s 50th Congressional District, leading John McCain by double digits (53 to 41 percent). The environment is now ripe for Democratic victories in a district George W. Bush won by 11 points – twice. Concerns about the economy dominate the political landscape, President Bush is more unpopular than ever, and five out of six voters think the country is off on the wrong track.

Leibham’s strong position is due to his appeal beyond Democratic base voters. He currently wins four out of five (79 percent) Democrats, while Bilbray wins three out of four (75 percent) of Republicans. The biggest difference, however, is that Leibham holds a 16-point advantage among voters not aligned with either party (48 to 32 percent)

Democrats have been coming close in this seat ever since the Duke-Stir, Randy “Duke” Cunningham, was sent to jail in 2006.  Francine Busby lost a special election and then the general election to Bilbray.  The third time may be the charm.

Adding to Bill Durston in CA-03 and Debbie Cook in CA-46, now Nick Leibham has some poll numbers showing a virtual tie:

You can now add Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-CA 50) to the new heap of GOP incumbents who should be suddenly very worried. A new poll, conducted for atty/ex-San Diego City prosecutor Nick Leibham’s (D) camp, shows him trailing Bilbray by a miniscule 44-42% margin.

This may feel like deja vu for GOPers. In the ’06 special election to fill imprisoned-Rep. Duke Cunningham’s (R) term, Bilbray needed $4.5M from the NRCC to skate by a relatively lackluster Dem. What’s worrisome for Bilbray is that the cash-starved NRCC can’t afford to put anywhere near that amount in his CD to save it this year. And the DCCC has enough cash, if it chooses to enter the contest, to make a difference. The NRCC simply can’t afford to overwhelm Dem efforts here like they did in ’06.

This is particularly acute in CA-50.  Leibham beat Bilbray in fundraising in the third quarter, and they are almost even in cash on hand.  Which means that, barring a life raft from the national party, Bilbray is largely on his own.  And he doesn’t have much to run on.  Here he is whining about that powerful ad from Leibham supporter Joe Hoar, a retired Marine General, which ripped Bilbray for voting against the new GI Bill:

Bilbray said he was one of the GI Bill’s original co-sponsors, but voted against it after congressional Democrats loaded it up with extraneous goodies, including a “massive tax increase” and a foreign aid package for Africa and Mexico.

“That’s the kind of cynical tactics we said ‘no’ to,” the Carlsbad Republican said. “We forced it to come back as a clean bill and we were able to pass it and it was signed into law in June.”

Actually, it wasn’t a clean bill at all, it was folded into an Iraq appropriation.  And he objected to it initially because it was funded by a tax on millionaires.

Liebham supporters have put up an attack website called Wrong Way Bilbray highlighting his votes.  Now that the campaign has settled into attacking Bilbray on the issues, with the Democratic wind at their backs, they are gaining traction.

And more than CA-50, what we’re seeing is an across the board re-evaluation of Republican incumbents, with multiple GOPers in trouble.

The Capitol Weekly reports, in an article about dimming GOP prospects, that Dana Rohrabacher is in a world of trouble.

The third contest is in the 46th Congressional District in Orange County, where incumbent Republican Dana Rohrabacher faces Huntington Beach Mayor Debbie Cook.

According to GOP sources, internal polling shows the difference between Rohrabacher and Cook, the mayor of Huntington Beach, to be within the margin of error, although Rohrabacher has heavily outspent Cook.   Hoffenblum believes Rohrabacher faces “possibly the strongest Democrat to run against him since the current district lines were drawn in 2001.”

I don’t think it’s accurate to say that Rohrabacher has heavily outspent Cook.  He only spent a paltry $38,000 in the third quarter, though that may be ramping up now.  I don’t think the NRCC is going to have a lot of money to help him either, though they’re making noises about it.

The strapped National Republican Congressional Committee, which at the end of August had $14 million in the bank, compared with $54 million for the Democrats, last week took out an $8 million loan to fund races in the final days of the campaigns. With scant resources, the fight for dollars is intense.  

GOP insiders believe some funds may flow to Rohrabacher in the 46th C.D., but that money for any of the others is problematic. Democrats declined to say whether Cook would get last-minute cash from national Democrats.

Calitics Match candidate Debbie Cook is a better Democrat.  She supports the Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq, quality health care for every American, and a post-carbon economy with green energy pushing out the dirty fuels of the past.  She would be an amazing legislator.  This can be done.  She needs your support.  Donate here.  I will be down in the district over the weekend to get a report.

And don’t just believe me about all this, check out theCook Political Report.

Here’s yet more evidence that the Dems are poised for huge gains in Congress: The Cook Report has released a new set of updated rankings on 25 House races — and all 25 are shifts in the Dems’ direction.

CA-03 Dan Lungren (R) – Solid Republican to Likely Republican

CA-04 OPEN, Doolittle (R) – Likely Republican to Lean Republican

CA-46 Dana Rohrabacher (R) – Solid Republican to Likely Republican

CA-50 Brian Bilbray (R) – Solid Republican to Lean Republican

That’s right, Charlie Brown, Nick Leibham and Bill Durston are looking very impressive.  And Charlie Cook is being very conservative with these picks.  We have the momentum, now we have to go out there and pull it off.

Maybe it’s all the endorsements, or that the anti-equality side has thus far been confined to right-wing zealots and religious forces trying to impose their doctrine on the state, but Proposition 8’s chances of passage are getting worse.

Opposition to a California ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage is mounting following Attorney General Jerry Brown’s move to change the language on the initiative, according to a Field Poll released today.

The poll found that just 38 percent of likely voters support the measure, while 55 percent intend to vote no. That compares with 42 percent in support and 51 percent opposed in July.

Brown amended the Proposition 8 summary language after the state Supreme Court’s decision on May 15 to overturn California’s previous ban on same-sex marriage.

The pollsters found the amended language played a role in that growing opposition, especially among the 30 percent of likely voters interviewed who had never heard of Prop. 8.

Those voters were much more likely to oppose the measure when read Brown’s wording (58 percent against it and 30 percent for it) than those in the same category who were read the old version of Prop. 8 (42 percent against and 37 percent for it), according to the Field Poll.

Yes, how dare that Jerry Brown put into print what the initiative would actually do, which is eliminate the right granted by the state for same-sex couples to marry.  The Yes on 8 folks are whining that Brown “interfered” with the election, when actually, words with meaning did.

You can get the internals of the poll here.  The initiative is running weak among DTS voters (56-28 against) and young voters (58-31 against).  Hispanics are against it 51-36, which actually is not as solid as whites (55-39 against).  And the key stat to me is that among divorced or separated voters, Prop. 8 fails 65-33.  That makes perfect sense; those who have lived through a bad marriage have less illusions about how equality would ruin its sanctity.

The way I would view this is the way that California initiative watchers commonly view the “Pro” side of the argument.  You have to start out 55% or higher before the negative ads kick in.  Right now the Yes on 8 folks are outraising the No side 3:2, mostly with out-of-state checks.  They’re going to blanket the state with ads and so we should not let our guard down.

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A mini-report:

• CA-04: I love this video from the Charlie Brown campaign.  They traveled 412 miles down to Thousand Oaks to talk to constituents of California’s Alan Keyes, State Senator and professional office-chaser Tom McClintock.  It’s really funny and drives the point home that McClintock is a do-nothing at best and a dangerous radical at worst:

And get this, McClintock is now running on the state budget, the Republican version of which has a 19% approval rating.  That’s like putting Nixon, Bush and Cheney in your campaign ad.

• CA-26, CA-45: Not one but two!  Both Russ Warner AND Julie Bornstein have been added to the DCCC “Races To Watch” list.  This is a prelude to being listed as Red To Blue candidates.  If the D-Trip comes through with some money, maybe threatened incumbents like Dreier will have to stop mouthing off about other GOP races and start paying attention to their own. UPDATE: Mike Lumpkin (CA-52) is on that list now too, which is a pleasant surprise.

• CA-46: When John Fund tries to target a Dem challenger, you know something’s going wrong.  Fund is sounding the alarm on Debbie Cook, as Dana Rohrabacher tries to greenwash himself with a scheme to build solar-power plants on federal land without environmental impact studies.  Fund says that Cook called this “an extreme position,” but he chopped the quote:

Democratic challenger and Mayor of Huntington Beach Debbie Cook agrees that the process of approving solar power plants is sluggish and needs to be sped up, but not at the expense of the environment.

“This is just another extreme position by Dana Rohrabacher. What we need to do is come up with a balanced approach that streamlines these projects, because they’re critically important to our energy future, but at the same time recognizes the impacts to the environment,” Cook said.

Rohrabacher’s doing the equivalent of saying he’ll grow jobs by hiring 10,000 federally funded serial killers, and then wondering why everyone’s worried about the mass death (“You wanted jobs, didn’t you?”).  There’s a sensible way to free up the bottlenecks and a rash one.  Rohrabacher chose door #2.

• CA-42: The internal poll results released by Ed Chau are intriguing (showing him up 44-38 after a mix of positive and negative information released on the candidates), but I don’t think candidates who have minimal bank accounts should do polls stating the numbers after a mix of information if they don’t have the money to get that information out.  But if Gary Miller truly has a 28% re-elect number as the poll states, he could be in trouble.

We’ve been hearing rumblings about this poll for a while, but it’s finally been released.  In the 26th District, where Bush rubber stamp David Dreier hasn’t had a legitimate opponent practically since being elected in 1980, Russ Warner is absolutely within striking difference with 88 days to the election.

The poll, conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, has all kinds of interesting information.  IN the baseline poll, Dreier does not reach 50%

CA-26 (GQRR, margin of error +/- 4.9%)

Dreier 49

Warner 37

The sample size is pretty small, but Dreier not breaking 50 after being the Representative for 28 years is significant.  What’s more, after information about each candidate is delivered to those polled, the numbers change dramatically.

Dreier 47

Warner 44

Other significant findings:

• Independent voters in the initial poll, before bios, support Warner 49-32.

• 63 percent disapprove of the job George W. Bush is doing as president, with half of all voters (50 percent) strongly disapproving.

• Only 45 percent of voters say they approve of the job Dreier is doing as Congressman, while 33 percent disapprove.

• Nearly four out of five voters (78 percent) say the country is off on the wrong track.

• Barack Obama is in a statistical tie with John McCain in the district, 44 percent to 47 percent, and their favorables are identical (46 fav-36 unfav).

• Dreier has high negatives in the district.  An equal number of those polled have a negative opinion of Dreier (32 percent) as have a positive opinion of him (32 percent).

The race is going to come down to resources.  Right now, Dreier has a huge war chest, and he’s undoubtedly going to use it to smear Warner and drive up his negatives.  However, if Warner has enough cash to compete, things will get very interesting in the 26th.