Democrat Dannel Malloy has pulled ahead to a 7 point lead in the race for governor in the latest Quinnipiac University poll that was released this morning.
Malloy, the former mayor of Stamford for 14 years, had 49 percent of those polled, while Foley, the former U.S. ambassador to Ireland, had 42 percent.
The poll showed that 7 percent are undecided and 20 percent say they could change their mind before Election Day. In a bad sign for Foley, he has the same 42 percent that he had in the last Quinnipiac Poll that was released on September 29, said Douglas Schwartz, the poll director.
Both candidates have huge support among their core voters. Malloy leads among Democrats by 89 percent to 5 percent, while Foley leads among Republicans by 85 percent to 12 percent.
Since the fall campaign began, Malloy has been consistently ahead in the polls, although the amount has fluctuated. Malloy was also ahead during the summer in hypothetical matchups against Republicans before Foley won the GOP primary in August.
The two candidates have been clashing sharply in television commercials and in a series of debates as the campaign heads into its final 18 days.
The high-octane race has become particularly nasty in two debates that Foley has described as "the brawl at The Bushnell'' in Hartford and "the grapple at The Garde'' in New London. The two candidates even argued at another forum over which one had changed a bedpan more recently after Malloy said that he had walked a picket line on primary day in August with union workers who change bedpans at a nursing home for $12 per hour.
In his latest television commercial this week, Foley looks directly into the camera and says that Malloy has continued making false attacks against him. Foley rejects Malloy's statements about The Bibb Company, a textile manufacturer that Foley owned until a bankruptcy organization in 1996. The company closed its historic mill in 1998 after a change in ownership and Foley had departed from the firm as the chief executive officer.
"New owners closed the mill two years after I left,'' Foley says into the camera. "Saying I closed it is completely untrue.''
Foley also said in the commercial that Malloy is "dead wrong'' that he will cut mandates in his "core-needs'' health insurance plan. "Don't be fooled by Malloy's false attacks,'' he said.
In particularly stark terms, even by political standards, Foley has been calling Malloy a liar.
"Malloy's lying raises serious questions about his temperament and character,'' Foley said this week. "He has lied so often, one has to wonder if it is a flaw in his personality. Shame on Dannel Malloy for repeatedly lying to the people of Connecticut and shame on him for trying to scare hardworking, middle-class families. He is simply trying to change the subject away from his record of raising taxes and killing jobs and his plan to raise taxes on Connecticut working families. He owes the people of Connecticut an apology.''
But even after Foley's latest commercial, the Malloy campaign repeated its statements about The Bibb Company and Foley's health care plan.
"Tom says our campaign is 'dead wrong' about his plans to change Connecticut's health care and that 'a governor can't even do that,' '' said Dan Kelly, Malloy's campaign manager. "Our first question is - if a governor can't affect change in health care, then why did you roll out a plan listing all the things you'd change as governor, Tom?''
Kelly added, "When it comes to the Bibb Company, Tom says he turned it around. Does turning a company around usually involve driving it into bankruptcy? SEC documents confirm that Bibb filed for bankruptcy on July 3, 1996, and that Tom was CEO of Bibb until August 1996 and a member of the board of directors until May 1997.''
He continued, "Tom says he added 3,000 jobs to Bibb. We'd love to see Tom's math on this one.''
In his own commercial that was being broadcast Friday morning, a narrator says, "As governor, Malloy will hold the line on taxes.''