Today, the campaign announced that former US Senator from Georgia Sam Nunn (in office 1972-1997) endorsed Alan’s candidacy for Senate! Nunn, who chaired the Senate Armed Services committee for almost a decade, continues his active public service as a distinguished professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech. In a letter to Alan, Sam praised Alan’s “vision, leadership, energy, and enthusiasm,” and wrote:
Your proven ability to accomplish significant legislative results as a private citizen indicate to me that you would be successful in the United States Senate and would have the potential to become one of the Senate’s most effective leaders
I can’t imagine a stronger endorsement from a former leader in the US Senate.
Further, there haven’t been any new polls since the November 23 Rasmussen poll, which put Khazei at 14% – a jump of 8% over the Globe poll a week prior. Given all these endorsements, I wouldn’t be surprised if Khazei jumped another 8% or more points in the polls between now and election day.
While both informal and unscientific, there are two currently ongoing polls that give some suggestion of the current pulse of the commonwealth. KennedySeat.com’s homepage has a poll about the winner of the Channel 5 debate, which puts Khazei at 26% (Capuano is at 28% and Coakley is at 38% of the 350 responses).
More significantly, the Boston Globe has an ongoing survey with over 1700 responses at time of writing, which has Khazei at 36.3%, leading the pack by a landslide (Coakley is at 20.6%, Capuano at 19.3%, and Pagliuca at 6.8%).
I know these are unscientific and non-representative polls (self selection bias, no random sample, etc. etc.) – but in terms of gauging the trends and the pulse of the state, I think things are looking more and more promising for dark-horse Khazei!
The last debate killed an momentum that he had (if any) from the Globe endorsement. I would personally be shocked if he breaks double digits. That’s IMHO.
In terms of individuals, aside from the three guys editing this blog, the big endorsements seem to be coming from Seattle (extended Kennedy family), New York City (Republican mayor), Oklahoma (NATO commander until 9 years ago), and Georgia (Senator a dozen years ago). Are any prominent officials in his adopted state backing him?
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p>Judging from the fact that the “Testimonials” section of his website consists almost entirely of Khazei saying nice things about himself, I guess the question’s answered…
…is that he forced DADT on Clinton and the military. He should have butted out. Clinton was Commander-in-Chief and should have issued the executive order as promised just as Truman did with regard to racial integration of our armed forces.
…the battle of the completely irrelevant and rather bizarre endorsements.
I hope they run that endorsement in their TV spots. That will drive his numbers DOWN a point or two in a Massachusetts Democratic primary.
So I would guess that that is the connection …