Joke’s on Crank in poll

Stop us if you've heard this one:

A guy walks into a bar with a presser in his hand with the latest polls numbers for his candidate.

He says: "Hey, I've got the latest poll numbers for Jeff Crank's campaign and he's in second place."

So a guy at the bar nursing a beer says: "Yeah but what's the margin of error?"

So Crank's guy responds: "Virtually zero!"

Ha, ha, ha. That one always cracks us up.

Seriously.

Because there is no such thing as a poll with "virtually zero" margin of error and any professional politicker knows it. 

That poll shows Crank in second place with about 30% of the vote .

So why would Crank's team throw that mud up on the wall? Surely they'd know that professionals can tell the difference between mud and BS, right?

The Inside Edge has heard that there is increasing pressure being put on both the Crank and the Rayburn campaigns by El Paso County GOP types to come to an agreement for one of them to drop out of the race. The feeling is (and always has been) that there is a legitimate shot at upsetting Lamborn but only if it's a two-way race.

"Rayburn feels pretty good about where he is at," said one source in El Paso County. "He's raising money and thinks he's the most legitimate candidate to unseat Lamborn. Crank had his shot and couldn't get it done."

Crank, on the other hand, one theory goes, hasn't been the runaway candidate to unseat Lamborn that he should be. And the Republican Party figures if Crank hasn't broken through by this time, despite a series of missteps and gaffes by Lamborn, then Crank just never will.

"Releasing that poll smells kind of bad to me," concluded our El Paso source. "It tells me that the Crank team isn't as comfortable about their position in the Party as they could be all thing considered. It seems kind of a desperate move to me."

Or just desperately funny.