More bad news greeted Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez on Monday when a new poll showed he trailed Democratic opponent Bill Ritter by nearly 9 percentage points.
The Zogby/Wall Street Journal poll comes on the heels of recent gaffes by Beauprez, as well as a lackluster month of fundraising.
Another poll taken in mid-July had Ritter leading by 7 percentage points, and a February poll showed Ritter ahead by 6 percentage points.
With 56 days left until the November election, Beauprez certainly has time to turn things around, said GOP consultant Katy Atkinson, but he is facing some significant hurdles.
“It looks like we’re seeing people who usually vote Republican thinking about voting Democrat,” she said. “In politics, perception is reality, and right now it looks like Beauprez doesn’t have his act together.”
John Marshall, campaign manager for Beauprez, said the congressman is exactly where he expected to be at this point in the campaign and that his opponent’s numbers would drop.
“The more people learn about Bill Ritter, the more they don’t like him,” Marshall said.
He also said the campaign would “be on the air soon” and implied a new ad buy would occur within a day. Ritter started running ads a week ago.
The new poll, conducted Aug. 29 through Sept. 5, had Ritter leading Beauprez 47.5 percent to 38.9 percent and was holding a big lead among voters under age 50.
The poll had a margin of error of 3.9 percentage points.
Beauprez had a difficult few weeks.
After Janet Rowland was picked as his lieutenant governor last month, it came out that she had compared gay marriage to bestiality earlier this year. Beauprez had to apologize two weeks ago after saying black women get abortions at the “appalling” rate of up to 70 percent.
And on Saturday, his August campaign finance report showed he raised $216,000 last month to Ritter’s $606,000.
Staff writer Karen E. Crummy can be reached at 303-954-1594 or kcrummy@denverpost.com.
