Judge Jim Gray, Libertarian nominee for U.S. Senator from California

Some politicians, especially ones way behind in them, like to say that the only poll that counts is the one on Election Day. This may be true in a sense, but polls of public opinion taken before and during campaigns are often very important. Unless a candidate scores high enough in a poll to be considered "viable," he or she will have considerable trouble raising money, recruiting volunteers, getting media coverage, or being taken seriously in general.

Respectable poll ratings can lead, through the means just listed, to higher and even more respectable poll ratings, and so on. The reverse can be true as well.

So it was both reasonable and somewhat unfair for the California League of Women Voters to exclude a bona fide Senate candidate, Libertarian Judge Jim Gray, from their upcoming gala debate at the Museum of (of all things) Tolerance in Los Angeles on August 10th because he had not, in their view, earned a spot by receiving at least 10% in any statewide poll.

Judge Gray and Xandra Kayden, lead consultant to the California League of Women Voters for their debates, debated the appropriateness of the League's policy in this regard on a recent California Politics Today program.

Still determined to get into the August 10th debate, Judge Gray commissioned Rasmussen Reports to conduct a poll of public opinion that actually gave respondents a chance to hear that he was one of the possible choices.

You can read about the results of this poll, taken on July 22, 2004, in a July 26th press release on the Rasmussen Reports web site.

Eight percent (8%) of likely voters said that, if the election were being held today, they'd vote for Judge Jim Gray for U.S. Senator.

Sixty-eight percent (68%) of those polled said they'd like to see Judge Gray in "the televised debates."

To a question designed to eliminate the effect on a person's vote of their assumption that voting for a non-Democrat/non-Republican would be a wasted vote since that candidate could never win, 18% of those asked whom they'd pick if their vote could elect the Senator of their choice chose Judge Gray.

The Rasmussen poll, commissioned and designed by the Gray campaign, asked 500 likely voters whether Judge Gray's position on three issues would "encourage" them to vote for him, or not. The results offer more insights into the current state of public opinion on these issues than they do about Judge Gray's chances of winning.

Promising to "treat marijuana like alcohol and control and tax it," encourages 42% of respondents in the direction of the Libertarian candidate, while it does not encourage 43%. Only 15% are moved neither one way nor another by this stand. Obviously, most Californians now hold pretty definite views on the subject of marijuana and the number holding opposite views is substantial and about the same on either side.

"Sunseting," government programs also gets a split decision, with 41% in favor and 36% opposed.

The division on Judge Gray's proposal to exclude all but violent felonies from the provisions of the "Three Strikes" law seems to reflect the same division that his position on marijuana reform does. Forty percent of likely voters agree with him on this, while 42 don't.

It's encouraging, from a technical perspective, to see almost the same results for both marijuana and penal reform, since, as Judge Gray points out in Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs, a very considerable proportion of inmates in California jails and prisons are there due to the inclusion of drug possession charges among the crimes counted as "strikes" under Three Strikes.