Mayor’s race

A poll conducted anonymously places Councilwoman Judi Brown Clarke just three percentage points behind State Rep. Andy Schor in the Lansing mayor’s race — much closer than earlier results.

A local public relations, Advantage Associates, said in a news release that an automated poll conducted last week showed Brown Clarke with 48.5 percent support and Schor with 51.5 percent. The news release said 399 “likely voters” responded to the robocall, of whom 210 were women. The respondents were roughly evenly distributed over the city’s four wards, it said. It was conducted May 30 to June 1 and has a 4 percent margin of error, the release said.

Earlier polling result showed a wide margin between Schor and Brown Clarke.

In March, Morgan Communications commissioned a poll, conducted by the local firm Practical Political Consultants, that showed Schor led Brown Clarke 47 percent to 20 percent. The poll, with 243 respondents, had an error rate of 6 percent.

Last fall, before Mayor Virg Bernero announced he would not seek reelection, a City Pulse poll showed Schor leading Bernero 46 percent to 34 percent, with Brown Clarke receiving 19 percent.

Advantage Associates is owned by Jake Davison, a self-described tea party conservative. He said in the release that the poll was conducted by Political Marketing International, a Florida automated polling firm.

Misspelling Brown Clarke’s last name, Davison said in the press release: “This poll challenges the conventional wisdom that Judi Brown Clark is significantly behind. No one can say who will replace Mayor Bernero at this point.”

The press release said Advantage Associates commissioned the poll. It is silent on whether it did so for a client.

Calls to Davison were not returned.

Schor called the results “junk polling.”

“All this release does is identify the right-wing political hired gun who conducted this push poll,” said Schor.

Schor said his campaign has not done any polling.

An effort to reach Brown Clarke was unsuccessful.

— Berl Schwartz