New Poll in House Majority Leader Race

Washington, D.C. - The Club for Growth, the nation's leading free-market advocacy organization with over 34,000 members, is announcing the results from a poll of likely voters from 20 swing districts currently held by Republicans which show that voters overwhelmingly prefer a new House Majority Leader who comes from outside the existing senior leadership and does not have close ties to the Washington lobbyist community. Fifty-two percent of those polled said that the type of person the House GOP elects as Majority Leader would impact how they viewed Republicans in Congress. "Voters in the GOP-held districts where the battle for the majority in the House of Representatives will be most hard-fought want Republicans to make a clean break from the past by choosing as Majority Leader someone new and without extensive ties to lobbyists," said Club for Growth President Pat Toomey. "As the only candidate in the race who isn't associated with the current senior leadership or the Washington lobbying community, John Shadegg offers Members a choice that can help improve the image of the GOP with voters as we go into a tough election cycle." The survey was conducted by Basswood Research on January 28-29, 2006, among 1000 likely general election voters throughout 20 "swing districts" nationwide currently held by Republican incumbents. A summary of the key findings can be found here (PDF). "Voters are watching what's going on in Washington and they don't like what they see," continued Toomey. "More voters associate the Republican leadership in Congress with corruption and dishonesty than with any other issue or action other than the war and an amazing eighty percent think ethical misconduct in Congress is either serious or scandalous." "To refocus the Republican majority on its core principles of limited government and adequately address voters' concerns about ethics, House Republicans need to make a clear change in leadership," concluded Toomey. "John Shadegg, an effective, principled leader, is the best choice to do just that."