A just-completed Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey on New York's 11th District (Staten Island) raised several eyebrows among local and national Republican operatives.
According to the survey, Rep. Dan Donovan, R-N.Y., the lone Republican House Member from New York City, was leading Democratic challenger Max Rose by a relatively close 47 to 39 percent districtwide.
Rose, former chief of staff at the Brightpoint Health non-profit healthcare organization and a decorated U.S. Army veteran of Afghanistan, got additional publicity for his fundraising prowess. Going into the final quarter of the campaign year, Democrat Rose reported having $1.6 million on hand to Donovan's $277,000.
Could an upset of monumental proportions, many observers wonder, be in the making in a district that has sent a Republican to Congress for all but two of the past 38 years?
"Democrats all over the country are outraising Republicans in House races, so Rose outraising Donovan is hardly a great surprise," historian David Pietrusza, author of the much-praised Teddy Roosevelt biography, "TR's Last War: Theodore Roosevelt, the Great War, and a Journey of Triumph and Tragedy," told Newsmax. "And this is in the district so near to the source of so much Democratic money in Manhattan. Beyond that, the recent federal cap on state and local tax deductibility may be harming Donovan in high-tax New York City."
State Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, the 2017 Republican nominee for mayor of New York, agreed.
"We all know polls are often unreliable, such as those across the nation which showed Hillary Clinton beating Trump," Malliotakis told us. "This is the most conservative district in New York City. Trump won it by 10 percent in 2016, and I garnered 67 percent of the vote against Mayor de Blasio last year. Dan Donovan has been serving this community well for decades and is more in sync with the district. Max Rose moved in two years ago and, unlike the majority of voters here, supports sanctuary cities and the legalization of marijuana."
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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