He might be a president's son, but Jack Carter isn't looking like the fortunate one in the race for Nevada senator.
According to a Review-Journal poll of voters across the state, Republican U.S. Sen. John Ensign has an overwhelming lead on Carter, the Democratic candidate.
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Sixty percent of the 625 voters surveyed last week said they favored Ensign in the contest, while 27 percent said they would vote for Carter. Thirteen percent were undecided.
"There's just no compelling reason why you'd want to vote against him," Republican operative Sig Rogich said of Ensign. "He's a very popular senator in this state."
Rogich said Carter has campaigned against the entire Republican party, trying to tar Ensign with the brush of Republican actions in Washington and President Bush's unpopularity. But that is not likely to work, he said, quoting the "all politics is local" maxim of former House Speaker Tip O'Neill.
"I still subscribe to that," Rogich said. "You have to find a compelling reason in each individual race why you would kick out a particular incumbent."
Brad Coker, managing partner of Mason-Dixon Polling and Research Inc., which conducted the survey, agreed, noting that the margin by which Ensign was ahead had widened. In an October Review-Journal poll, Ensign had 59 percent to Carter's 25 percent.
"The undecided voters tend to go for the challenger, so I suspect Carter will pick up a chunk of the base Democrats," Coker said. "But Ensign still wins by a wide margin."
Carter has been counting on his status as the son of a former president to give him a boost, but, Coker said, "Jack Carter's father was never very popular in Nevada, and he doesn't have very deep roots in Nevada."
Eric Herzik, a University of Nevada, Reno, political scientist, noted that Jimmy Carter was the only presidential candidate since 1912 to win the presidency without winning Nevada.
"Nevadans are fairly independent voters" and very loyal to incumbents, Herzik said. "You have to give them a reason to vote for you, not just a negative. If you can't come up with a reason why you're better than the person you're running against besides 'he's friends with George Bush,' that isn't enough to win."
Jack Carter said he wasn't discouraged by the numbers.
"There is no bad news until November," he said. "We have not yet begun to campaign. We've been consolidating our base and raising money. We'll be more in the public and in the press in the coming quarter."
