Armed with a new poll suggesting he could run competitively against U.S. Rep. David J. Trone (D), Del. Jason C. Buckel (R-Allegany), the House minority leader in Annapolis, said Wednesday he is considering a late entry into the race to take on the wealthy congressman.
A handful of candidates, including Buckel’s House colleague, Del. Neil C. Parrott (R-Washington), who was the Republican nominee in 2020, are already seeking the GOP nomination. The 6th District, which Trone has represented since 2017, is seen now as highly competitive since the newest congressional map was passed by the General Assembly and signed into law by Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R) earlier this month — especially with the election cycle shaping up to be very favorable for Republicans.
“I’m giving it some consideration,” Buckel said in an interview, “though it’s never been part of my grand plan.”
Buckel said “consultants and people at national levels have been talking to me about how to put our best foot forward in the 6th District.”
The candidate filing deadline is 9 p.m. Friday, so Buckel will have to decide quickly. He said he is conferring with family, friends and his law partners and is also factoring in the commitments he made to his Western Maryland constituents and to fellow House Republicans in Annapolis to guide their election effort this year. Other considerations, he acknowledged, are Trone’s unlimited ability to self-fund his race, and the prospect of running against Parrott in a GOP primary.
“Neil Parrott and I are friends, so I wouldn’t enjoy that situation,” Buckel said.
But it seems apparent that national Republicans are trying to entice Buckel into the race. A national GOP polling firm, McLaughlin & Associates, has conducted a poll in recent days showing Buckel running within the margin of error in a hypothetical head-to-head contest with Trone.
The poll of 300 likely general election voters, taken Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, showed Trone with 44.5% of the vote to Buckel’s 40%. That was within the poll’s 5.7-point margin of error, suggesting the race would be very close.
On a generic ballot test for Congress, which asked voters in the district whether they’d rather be represented by a Republican or a Democrat, 45% said they’d prefer a Republican and 44% said they would prefer a Democrat.
“Trone — as an incumbent — performing no better than a generic candidate demonstrates his vulnerability,” pollster Rob Schmidt wrote in a memo summarizing the survey’s results.
The poll also found that Trone had “soft name awareness,” with a favorable rating of 36% compared to 23% of voters who viewed him unfavorably.
“A net positive image rating of only 13-points is not an encouraging sign,” Schmidt wrote. “This weakness extends to his job rating as just 41% Approve and 27% Disapprove of Trone, a similar spread to his image rating. Strong incumbents are almost always at or over 50% on these three metrics (ballot share, favorable rating and job rating) and Congressman Trone is below this threshold in all three cases.”
Equally distressing for Democrats, President Biden’s approval ratings in the district continue to decline, even though voters surveyed in the poll said they voted for him by 10 points in the 2020 White House election. In the GOP poll, 46% of voters said they approve of the job Biden is doing, compared to 53% who disapproved.
“It follows a pattern I’m seeing across the country, in terms of the president’s job approval over the last six to eight months and continuing to crater out,” Schmidt said in an interview. “It shows Republicans are expanding…
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