Ten Days and Counting

With ten days and counting, things have never looked more troubling for Murphy. Within the last week Murphy’s team has put together a new better looking website about a month after Caligiuri cam out with his new one. There are only a number of ways that Murphy can still pull this reelection off. One of them by just relying heavily on name recognition, the second by just flooding the market with his name and who he is, and lastly by making sure he is here for the district and not for his job.

The best thing that Murphy has going for him in the last ten days is his name, within the fifth district his name is known, but that is where the trouble lies. Are the people that know his name fore the wrong reason coming to the polls this November second, going to out weigh those who know his name and are going to vote for him or just vote for the person with the most ‘famous’ name. The second thing that Murphy can do, and has been doing is to flood the market with his name and who he is. Which can be seen in the two of his new TV ads Murphy one called 'Business' and the other ‘Still New’ in which Murphy talks about how he is still new to the job of being a Congressman and what little he has been able to do will not compare to what he wants to do for the district.

The reason as to why Murphy has every right to worry about his campaign and how it is doing over all can be seen once again in the amount of money, this time for once not in favor of Murphy. From July to September, only looking at individual help contributions Murphy took in about $522,000 while Caligiuri took in about $435,000, which is about a gap of about $86,000, which is the smallest gap to date. Caligiuri points out that Murphy claims to have the support of “the people” but when in reality only a small fraction of Murphy’s money comes from “the people”, over $900,000 in contributions came from interest groups, which Caligiuri has no problem pointing out on his website. (Link)

These next ten days are go time for both Murphy and Caligiuri, ten day in the political world is like ten weeks for use. A lot can happen, but the only thing that is for sure is that come November second we will find out whether Murphy had anything to worry about or if this was just excitement driven up by the media or if the fifth district of Connecticut will have a new Congressman and giving New England, its only Republican House member.