Scott Powers
Donna Shalala might not be a candidate for Florida’s 27th Congressional District but she would be leading the very-crowded field of Democrats who are formally in that South Florida race, according to a Politico report Tuesday morning about a new poll.
The survey, conducted last month by the research strategy firm Bendixen and Amandi International, finds that, as a hypothetical candidate, Shalala, a former University of Miami president who had been in President Bill Clinton‘s cabinet, more than doubles the vote support of the other Democrats in CD 27, according to the report in Politico Tuesday morning. The survey finds Shalala drawing 24 percent, and second-place state Sen. José Javier Rodríguez of Miami managing 10 percent support.
The poll found that the vast majorities of voters don’t know any of the Democrats running in CD 27, including Rodriguez.
Bendixen and Amandi conducted the survey of 600 Democratic voters by phone on Jan. 20-24, claiming a margin of error of 4 percentage points, according to survey slides posted by Politico.
Even though the district has elected a Republican, U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, every year since 1989, it has trended Democrat in voter registration and voted strongly for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, making it a key prospect for a Democratic flip. Consequently, it has attracted 10 Democratic candidates, yet none of them is named Shalala yet.
Nonetheles, Shalala’s name keeps coming up, to the point that earlier this month Democratic candidate Mary Barzee Flores spoke out against her in a blog post.
Bendixen and Amandi polled favorability for the top seven Democrats and found 70 to 90 percent of the voters do not know who Rodriguez, Barzee Flores, Kristen Rosen Gonzalez, David Richardson, Ken Russell, Michael Hepburn, or Matt Haggman are yet, or have no opinions about them.
