A month after Rep. Darrell Issa won re-election in the closest congressional race in the country, the congressman got a warning that his next contest could be even tougher.

An internal poll by Issa’s campaign shows a 10-point drop in the Vista Republican’s favorability ratings between mid-October and early December, and that Issa’s support for President Donald Trump is likely one of the reasons his image took a hit.

Overall, the poll suggests Issa was hurt significantly by negative television advertising during the campaign.

On Oct. 18, Issa had a 40 percent unfavorable rating — a score that rose to 49 points by Dec. 7. His favorable rating edged down from 42 percent to 41 percent during that time.


The poll found that voters who saw television ads remembered Issa’s ties to Trump more than any other detail, and when voters had negative things to say about their representative, his support for Trump was at the top of the list.

Issa, one of Trump’s highest-profile supporters in last year’s campaign, has since distanced himself from the president and his administration.

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Issa called for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself so an “independent prosecutor” to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election, but then said a prosecutor wasn’t necessary since nobody had been accused of a crime. He later called for an “independent review.”

Trump and his policies were the major focus of sometimes sharp questions Issa faced during a town hall-style meeting on Saturday in Oceanside.

In the context of this poll and the demands from constituents in the last month, it makes sense why Issa decided to hold the meeting, said Robert Dempsey, the campaign manager for Issa’a opponent last year, Democrat Doug Applegate.


“We know that when we hold our elected officials accountable, they have to stand up and stand by their records,” he said. “If I was Congressman Issa, I would not want to be in that position, which is why he is doing those town hall meetings, and seemingly moving to the center, and joining the climate change caucus,”

Issa defeated Applegate by 0.6 percent, a 1,621-vote margin. Applegate immediately announced he would seek a rematch in 2018. Last week environmental attorney Mike Levin, former executive director of the Orange County Democratic Party, announced he will enter the race.

Issa’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment about the poll and neither did the Republican National Campaign Committee. The poll and analysis were contained in documents for an unsuccessful $10 million libel lawsuit Issa filed against Applegate. A judge dismissed that case on Friday.

The poll sample was exclusively from the San Diego portion of Issa’s district, an area that includes 75 percent of the electorate. (Issa has historically done better in the Orange County portion, which has the remaining 25 percent of the 49th District.)


The poll shows Issa’s strengths and weaknesses, but it also reveals, more than any other single factor, that the new president was a big influence on Issa’s public image.

“Donald Trump is deeply unpopular in the 49th District because his values are not shared by a majority on a wide array of issues. And Darrell Issa is a full-blown Trump apologist,” Levin said.

Issa barely won the district, but Trump received 43.2 percent of the vote to Hillary Clinton’s 50.7 percent.

Across the country Democrats tried to link vulnerable House Republicans to Trump and some of the controversial stances the Republican nominee took on the campaign trail. Issa was no exception.


The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Applegate both released ads that made use of Issa’s endorsement of Trump.

Applegate and Issa don’t pull punches in new ads »

Issa’s poll shows that the message in those commercials stuck. A total of 27 percent of voters surveyed who saw the ads remembered that Issa is a Trump supporter, more than any other detail that they could recall.

The survey also asked participants to share the first two or three things that come to mind when they think of Issa. The most dominant impression was his effectiveness in office, the choice of 18 percent of voters surveyed.


There was a tie for his second-most dominant trait: 14 percent said when they thought of Issa they thought of Trump, and the same percentage said they thought of corruption and dishonesty in connection with Issa.

Thirteen percent said he was not for the people, but rather for big business or himself, the survey shows.

All those were themes in the attack ads.

The poll was conducted for Issa’s campaign by Public Opinion Strategies from Dec. 5-7 and included 400 general election voters from the San Diego County portion of the 49th congressional district. It has a 4.9 percent margin of error.


Twitter: @jptstewart


joshua.stewart@sduniontribune.com

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