Edelen Not Concerned With Recent Poll Numbers

Considered the favorite by political observers, Democratic candidate for state auditor Adam Edelen isn’t worried about a recent poll that shows him only three points ahead of Republican John Kemper.By all indications Edelen should be winning the race by a much wider margin when considering he is the former chief of staff for Governor Steve Beshear and has been endorsed by current State Auditor Crit Luallen, who cannot seek a third term by law.Campaign finance records show Edelen with over $430,000 from the primary election while Kemper had close to $20,000. But a survey conducted by Insight’s Pure Politics had Edelen up 31-to-28 points over Kemper, who has been mired in personal bankruptcy problems.Edelen says he expected the race to be close after running in an uncontested primary and that his campaign will begin airing advertisements in every corner of the state fairly soon."I don’t think the polls matter at all, particularly polls that are run two months before an election in which neither candidate has really been out aggressively broadcasting their message," he says. "Our campaign hasn’t had that opportunity because we didn’t have a primary, but our opponent hasn’t’ been able to do that frankly because he just doesn’t have the resources. He doesn’t have a strong network of support that crosses anything other than a pretty narrow political ideology."The poll shows few are paying attention to the race at this point with 34 percent still undecided and observers expect the gap to widen once Edelen begins airing advertisements.Kemper, a Lexington developer, was unavailable for comment but he told Pure Politics that he was "tickled to death" about the poll results.