Robert Bender has the lead in the GOP primary to replace County Commissioner Grover Robinson, according to an Inweekly/Political Matrix poll of 419 likely Republican voters in Escambia County District 4. However. Boyce White, Greg Litton and Terry Strickland are within the poll’s margin of error (+/- 4.5%), and with 47.2 percent of the voters uncertain who will get their votes, Bill Fetke and Kendrick Dodge are still very much in the race.
With absentee voting starting in less than a month, a great deal of ground need to be made up over the next couple of weeks. Watch for this and all the contested primary races to heat up very quickly.
| Total | Overall % | 29-Mar
Poll
|
|
| Robert Bender | 58 | 13.8% | 11.3% |
| Boyce White | 38 | 9.1% | 8.5% |
| Greg Litton | 36 | 8.6% | – |
| Terry Strickland | 35 | 8.4% | 4.4% |
| Bill Fetke | 28 | 6.7% | 3.1% |
| Kendrick Doidge | 26 | 6.2% | 5.9% |
| Undecided | 161 | 38.4% | 62.7% |
| I don’t know these candidates | 37 | 8.8% | – |
The persons sampled were likely voters of the primary and general election cycles. They were called using an Interactive Voice Response system during the hours of 2-8 p.m. June 20-22. The phone numbers called were provided by the Escambia County Supervisor of Elections office. The Margin of Error for this study is +/- 4.5% with a confidence level of 95%.
I’ve met four of six of the candidates. All are very nice guys. Greg Litton has movie star looks as if he just came on set from Central Casting. I met him the first time on Friday. I’ve run into Bill Fetke several times out and about. Terry Stickland is working very hard knocking on doors. I see him out all the time. I’ve run into Robert Bender three times most recently on Friday and have engaged in two long discussions with him. Of the four mentioned here, he has the most detailed understanding of not only the county government but also the city government. (He is a city resident.) He told me a few things I did not know. If the campaign ever becomes about facts, issues and ideas, then Bender is going to have a natural advantage because he seems to have a pretty good idea about what is broken (a lot) that needs to be fixed in county government starting with county commissioners who do not show up at meetings, arrive late, leave early and vanish in the middle of meetings to do who knows what and openly seem to have no idea what is being discussed because they have not bothered to read the agenda in advance of the meeting. Bender strikes me as a guy who would put in a lot of time before each meeting and so ask few of the often inane questions asked if the commissioners even bother to ask questions so often voting YES because someone whispered in their ear or gave them a big campaign contribution or a contract. Any of the guys mentioned above are likely to improve a county government characterized by a culture of non-compliance, non-enforcement and non-accountability where the plan of the day always seems to include plenty of finger pointing and blame shifting. What would be really fascinating is if all six candidates were asked to send Inweekly their top ten or even just top five items on their “To Do” list to include a brief explanation of how they would do it because candidates often make promises they cannot keep because sometimes state law expressly preempts what would otherwise seem like a pretty good idea except that the lobbyists who own the state legislators are not big fans of doing what is best for the people.