On the same day a poll was released showing Sen. Scott Brown (R., Mass.) holding a 26-point edge among independent voters in Massachusetts, his Democratic opponent, Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren, appeared at a press conference for a far-left organization racked by scandal.
On Tuesday, the Democratic polling firm Public Policy Polling released a new poll showing Brown leading Elizabeth Warren by five points, 49 to 44 percent. Brown leads Warren 58 to 32 percent among independents. He has also won over 20 percent of Democrats. 54 percent of those polled said Brown is "about right" ideologically, while only 27 percent said the same of the Republican Party.
Independents comprise 48 percent of Massachusetts voters.
"Scott Brown’s been able to hold up his image as a moderate and that has him in a good position right now," Public Policy Polling president Dean Debnam said in a statement.
Warren’s unfavorability rating in the poll has increased 10 points in the last five months, during which time the controversy surrounding her heritage and academic career badly damaged her campaign while exposing voters to her left-wing policy positions.
Warren appeared Tuesday at a press conference in Boston alongside Center for American Progress Action Fund senior vice president Tara McGuinness and state Rep. Kathi-Anne Reinstein (D., Revere), celebrating the release of a new Center for American Progress (CAP) paper related to the impact of Mitt Romney’s policies on women.
Chaired by Democracy Alliance member John Podesta and funded in part by progressive hedge-fund billionaire George Soros, CAP is a far-left political pressure group and messaging operation that recently found itself mired in an anti-Semitism controversy at the end of 2011.
The Obama White House distanced itself from CAP after an employee of the Center for American Progress Action Fund referred to Israel-supporting Jews as "Israel Firsters," a term that originated in the white supremacist movement that some consider anti-Semitic, the Washington Post reported earlier this year.
CAP is not the only left-wing interest group trying to influence the Massachusetts Senate race.
Soros himself has donated $5,000 to the Massachusetts Democratic Party State Account, according to records made available Tuesday.
Soros also has numerous links to ProgressNow and Demos, the national liberal political organizations targeting Brown. Soros previously held a New York City fundraiser for Warren.
Brown, meanwhile, spent Tuesday enjoying the second day of his "Scott Brown on the Road: from Provincetown to Pittsfield" tour, as he visits Massachusetts small businesses to tout his fiscal policy credentials.
Brown set off from South Station in Boston and ended up making a detour at George’s Hot Dogs in Taunton, Mass. "I don’t think the government did it for him. I think he did it on his own," Brown said of the owner of the hot dog stand.
"He came to the General Dynamics facility today and that was a huge success. There were about 300 employees there and everyone wanted to thank him for his work on stopping the reprogramming of funding for the WIN-T program," Massachusetts state Rep. Shaunna O’Connell, who represents Taunton, told the Free Beacon. The WIN-T program is the U.S. Army communications network for which General Dynamics is prime contractor.
"It was nice to hear someone in the crowd yell out ‘I’m a Democrat and you have my vote!’" O’Connell said.
Brown launched the tour on the heels of his major tax policy speech August 15 at the South Shore Chamber of Commerce, where he discussed Warren’s support for $3.4 trillion in tax hikes.
Warren disputed that the amount of her proposed tax hikes adds up to $3.4 trillion, claiming Brown calculated the figure by holding her accountable for various policies on which she has since changed her position. However, Warren still stands behind a number of tax hikes that would result in at least $1 trillion in new U.S. taxes.
The Warren campaign did not return a request for comment.