News
Mar
19From the Express-News:
...The breakdown of 500 likely voters sampled March 12 to 15 shows Castro gaining, while Cibrian and DeBerry-Mejia have slid after the entrance of term-limited City Councilwoman Sheila McNeil into the race.
With a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points in either direction, Castro leads the way with 43 percent of the vote. DeBerry-Mejia is next at 15 percent, while Cibrian and McNeil posted 6 percent and 5 percent, respectively.
Strategists for DeBerry-Mejia and Cibrian have admitted all along their only path to victory is through a runoff, which means keeping Castro from getting more than 50 percent of the votes May 9.
Their blueprint is the 2005 mayoral election, when Phil Hardberger came from behind to win a runoff a month after Castro finished first with 42 percent of the vote.
That scenario certainly could still play out, but so far the dynamics today are far different from 2005.
By this time in the campaign four years ago, Hardberger and eventual third-place finisher Carroll Schubert were both polling solidly in the 20s. That was key because it meant there was a potential majority of voters who had already decided on anyone but Castro.
Today, the only polling we have shows DeBerry-Mejia, Cibrian and McNeil with a collective 26 percent. Even if the poll is skewed a few points, the anti-Castro bloc is currently nowhere near what it was in 2005.
Like any candidate, Castro has negatives that can be exploited. But it takes as much as $70,000 a week for an effective TV buy.
And now that Castro has sewn up the endorsements of people like Charles Butt, Randall Mays, Edith McAllister and Bartell Zachry, the pressure is on the challengers to show they can raise enough money at $1,000 per contribution to tighten this race up.
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