What Are The Biggest Issues To Voters?

We know the Democrats feel like they have a winning issue with PERS, sending out templated emails from Democratic groups and original pieces too at times. But Republicans feel like they have deflected this for a couple reasons: 1) Republican House members and candidates aren’t actually on the record of wanting drastic changes that Democrats are trying to convince voters they stand for. The opposite is true, and you generally hear Republicans and Democrats saying similar things on the issue. Democrats have a commission to attack and are trying to create this atmosphere that the GOP wants to kill PERS, see their talking points here, but don’t actually have any of the candidates they are targeting calling for what the Democrats are implying. 2) This isn’t the biggest issue to voters. Democrats appear to be spending a great amount of enthusiasm on an issue that wouldn’t rank at the top (or top two or three) for most voters.

On the flip side, Republicans feel they have a solid issue in making a populist play targeting lawmakers pay and benefits, particularly pay raise legislation when targeting incumbents. We’ve seen it in mailers and ads. Here is a recent ad from Cindy Bryan, who is running against Bob Evans in HD 91:

Bryan continues to be one of the big surprises in my view. As I have said, with the makeup of the district, it’s just not one where you expect to see Republicans do well. Republicans didn’t even field a candidate here four years ago. Previous to Evans, this seat was held by Joey Hudson who you wouldn’t consider a conservative, but he was more moderate than Evans who has been a straight Billy McCoy vote during his first term.

Evans released his October 10 report on October 18th, and numbers show he has been outraised by Bryan. Evans raised about $5,500 this period to get to $8,000 for the year. He has a little more than $7,000 in the bank. Bryan has raised more than $25,000 this year, spent a little more than $21,000, and has $4,000 cash on hand.

And Evans isn’t the only Democrat who has been or will be hit on the issue.

** Speaking of the PERS issue, seven Republican Senators will take part in a press conference tomorrow to “address PERS and Democrat scare tactics.” This includes Senators Michael Watson, Chris McDaniel, Giles Ward, Terry Burton, Gary Jackson, Videt Carmichael, and Doug Davis. The press conference will take place at 11:30 at the state capitol. This has been moved to Wednesday as the capitol’s schedule is packed this week. More details later.