Battle of the incumbents….sort of.
Convicted felon Michael Grimm, who will fight to get his old congressional seat back against its current holder, Congressmember Dan Donovan, in a heated primary race for the November election, is reportedly up by 10 percent for the Republican nod.
A poll conducted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) – a group that has been vocal about its goals to flip the seat, held by the GOP for decades (except for a two-year period when Democrat Michael McMahon held the post) and which went red for President Donald Trump in the 2017 election – estimates the ex-Marine and FBI agent currently would draw 49 percent of the vote.
Former Staten Island District Attorney Donovan gets just 39 percent, according to the poll, which surveyed just over 400 Republican primary voters over three days in April. In terms of performance, the DCCC claims that 67 percent of voters approved of Grimm’s job performance, in comparison to Donovan’s 47.
Grimm and Donovan are the only two running for the GOP nomination for the seat – which encompasses Staten Island and a swathe of southern Brooklyn from Bay Ridge to Gravesend – though the winner will face off against one of six Dems, Max Rose, Omar Vaid, Michael DeVito, Paul Sperling, Zach Emig and Radhakrishna Mohan all currently in the running.
Donovan – a GOP rep who Grimm has repeatedly slammed for not being conservative enough – was elected to replace Grimm in 2015 before winning his first full term in 2016 after his predecessor pleaded guilty to tax evasion and other federal charges.
The former pol served seven months of an eight-month prison sentence.
The poll’s margin of error is reportedly just under five percent.