Time Magazine called Ohio's 15th district as one of the top 15 "Key House Battles" in a recent issue:
After a very competitive re-election campaign, Representative Deborah Pryce decided to retire in August of 2007, opening up another House seat in closely contested central Ohio. Pryce's 2006 opponent, Mary Jo Kilroy, is running again for the seat, but is being challenged by state senator Steve Stivers. Kilroy, already familiar to many voters in the district, has shown herself slightly stronger in fundraising than Stivers, and her campaign released an internal poll showing her up ten points. But Stivers' campaign believes those numbers only reflect Kilroy's currently higher name recognition, and that the final tally in November will be far different....
Another factor that benefits Kilroy is that a larger number of real voters have donated to her campaign. Stivers, a former bank lobbyist, has more donations from special interest groups, PACs, and lobbyists than voters.
>>>Do you remember that poll that the Kilroy campaign had done that showed her with a 10 point lead over former bank lobbyist, Steve Stivers? Here are some tidbits from the KilroyforCongress website:
...The poll shows Kilroy leading Stivers, 47 percent to 37 percent. Kilroy is benefiting from fairly high name identification (78 percent), largely from her closely contested campaign against Pryce last election cycle. She had a net favorability rating of 10 percent — 44 percent of respondents held a favorably opinion of her, while 34 percent viewed her unfavorably.....
...Kilroy came within a percentage point of defeating Pryce in 2006, with the advantage of running in a highly favorable Democratic statewide and national environment. She has been a strong fundraiser, banking nearly
$1 million in her campaign account at the end of March....
By the way, in that poll, when the pollsters mentioned that Stivers was a former bank lobbyist ".....and the fact that he often prioritized the banking industry above the interests of Ohio consumers....", his favorable rating dropped almost another 10 points.