October 20, 2007

Family Research Council Straw Poll Results: Romney and Huckabee Tie for First Place

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huckabee_romney_paul.jpg

This is big. Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee’s tie for first place here at the Family Research Council’s Washington Briefing (aka the “Voters Value Summit”) should mark his emergence. It’s not clear he’s a first tier candidate just yet, but he has the heart of the Christian evangelicals, and that’s a great base if you’re seeking the GOP nod. Here are the results in full:

Mitt Romney: 1,595 (27.6%)
Mike Huckabee: 1,565 (27.1%)
Ron Paul: 865 (15.0%)
Fred Thompson: 564 (9.8%)
Sam Brownback: 297 (5.1%)
Duncan Hunter: 140 (2.4%)
Tom Tancredo: 133 (2.3%)
Rudy Giuliani: 107 (1.85%)
John McCain: 81 (1.4%)

Total votes: 5,776

Other notes, some quite stunning:

– Mike Huckabee crushed all other contenders amongst those voters who submitted their votes on-site. (FRC members have been able to vote online since August.) A whopping 51.3 percent of on-site voters pulled the lever for Huckabee, which reflects the enthusiasm that greeted his speech earlier today. Romney only got 10.4 percent of on-site votes. Fred Thompson placed third, with 8.1 percent.

– Ron Paul’s third place finish puts him ahead of frontrunners Thompson, Giuliani, and McCain, but it is a product of his strength on the internet. Paul’s speech had a lot of content (on the economy, on foreign policy) that was out of style during a weekend filled almost exclusively with talk of abortion, family issues, and gay rights. He took just 25 votes from on-site voters; that’s 2.6 percent. The rest of his votes came online.

– The poll also asked respondents who would be “least acceptable” as president. Hillary Clinton ran away with that one. She took 71.7 percent of all votes. Second, amazingly, was Rudy Giuliani, with 9.2 percent.

– John McCain and Rudy Giuliani couldn’t break two percent, which is pretty pathetic. Giuliani has a reason: he’s pro-choice and multiple evangelical leaders, including Tony Perkins, president of FRC, have said they refuse to vote for a pro-choice candidate. John McCain, on the other hand, has no excuse for becoming persona non grata. Miserable weekend for the Arizona senator.

You can find MoJoBlog’s summary of Huckabee’s speech here; the summary of Romney’s is here. Sam Brownback would have been a strong contender in this straw poll had he not dropped out; my Brownback experience from yesterday is here.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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