From the inbox:
Miguel Suazo
Miguel Suazo, the Democratic nominee for Texas Land Commissioner, is within 5 points of incumbent George P. Bush. The poll was conducted shortly after Suazo was endorsed by former Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, a Republican.
The poll shows the two major party candidates within 5 points, with the Libertarian taking an unusually high percentage:
Suazo (D): 36%
Bush (R): 41%
Pina (L): 13%Bush is clearly being hurt by his handling of the Alamo, a landmark that is overseen by the General Land Office. Managed by a handful of non-profits, it’s left many people wondering: who’s in charge over there?
“The Alamo has experienced nothing short of a failure of leadership under George P. Bush,” said Miguel Suazo. “While true Texans want to remember the Alamo, George P. Bush wants to reimagine it. This is unacceptable and it’s just one of the many areas that the General Land Office is demonstrating a lack of competency.”
The poll was conducted by Change Research from September 19-21 among more than 1,700 registered voters in Texas.
This is literally all I know about this poll, which came out before the recent Senate polls, so I’m not going to get very deep. As you might imagine, we don’t have much history of Land Commissioner polling, mostly because most people know nothing about the General Land Office or the candidates for it. We do have this result from June 2014, in which then-candidate George P. Bush led former El Paso Mayor John Cook by a 36-25 margin, in a poll where Greg Abbott led Wendy Davis 44-32. (Here’s where I say that I sure wish this poll also included a Beto/Cruz number, for comparison purposes.) In some sense, this is probably akin to a generic R/D poll result, and I will note that the UT/Trib poll from this June had a “generic Congress” and “generic Lege” question, in which Dems were even closer than this. Does any of this mean anything? I don’t know. But now you know what I do know.