FLASHREPORT

Federal lobbyist and former Congressman Brian Bilbray, the Republican, is LOSING to liberal school teacher Francine Busby, the Democrat in a "safe" GOP seat as conservatives nationally, and in this coastal San Diego County district are fed up with 'big government' Republicanism. 

I just got off of the phone with Bill Hauf.  The overwhelming majority of FR readers will be unfamiliar with who that is - Hauf is one of the conservative candidates who ran in the large field to replace 'Duke' Cunningham in Congress.  Hauf, who ran a principled campaign on the issues, didn't fare as well as he would have liked.  But he was proud that nearly 70% of the votes that went to Republicans were cast for conservative/reform candidates.  Of course, Brian Bilbray who is a liberal-moderate Republican, who one with about 15% of the vote, now has to consolidate Republicans and decline-to-state voters behind him for the special election run-off on June 6th.

A lot of conservatives in the 50th District have been worried about whether Bilbray can win in June, but Hauf took his concern one step further.  Hauf actually commissioned a survey from Bob Moore of Moore Information, a very reputable pollster, who conducted 450 interviews in the district.  The results were quite disturbing.  I have actually attached a memo provided to me by Hauf from Moore, so you can read it yourself.

But the highlights of the survey conclusions were:

• In the race to fill the vacancy, Francine Busby leads Brian Bilbray 43-37% among all voters, with each of the minor party candidates getting 1%, 5% voting for none of the candidates and 13% undecided. 
• In the GOP primary for the regular term, Republican Brian Bilbray is the frontrunner.  Eric Roach is his nearest opponent today, trailing Bilbray.  None of the other candidates gets over 5% in this 10-way test.
• In two informed general election match up tests, Roach does better than Bilbray against Busby.

(Check out the attached survey summary page by clicking through the attachment below.)

When I asked Hauf his thoughts on having gotten this information back in the survey he told me, "I'm afraid that Mr. Bilbray is going to lose this seat and the Democrats are going to win.  I think we have only a short period of time to figure out how we are going save this seat for the Republican Party."

Hauf went on to say, "I commissioned this survey to find out whether I could mount campaign to keep this seat in the GOP column.  I looked to see if I would be viable as a candidate who could win - but what I concluded from the survey is that Eric Roach is the only possible candidate that would be able to win not only the primary in June but the general election against Francine Busby in November."

FR readers need to remember that this is a split ballot, and voters will first choose between Bilbray and Roach to fill out the unexpired remainder of Cunningham's term, and then they will vote in the regular June primary.  Every candidate who ran in the special is listed on that ballot, including Hauf, including Roach.

Right now, Eric Roach, who came in second in the crowded field by 1% or so (and by some thoughts, he may have actually won the pure GOP vote as this special was an 'open primary' where Democrats may have crossed over to vote for Bilbray, a lobbyist, as he would have been their choice to face Busby) is looking very closely at making a run for this seat. 

Based on this survey, Roach can add one more important item to his "reasons to run" list - the Republican Party needs him.  Without a conservative on the June ballot, where there are no notable contested GOP primaries in most of the district, the party stands a good chance of losing this seat.

I've spent time with Roach, and he is exactly the kind of candidate we need to instill energy, enthusiasm and pride in the conservative voters that live in this district.  If you look at this survey on MSNBC, you can see that nationally we have a big problem with conservatives.  Roach can bring these conservatives to the polls.  Otherwise, we may be looking at a GOP loss in a so-called "safe" seat.