Though he's spoken at untelevised forums, neither KDKA nor PCNC invited him to join televised debates between Murphy and O'Connor, citing his low poll numbers. Hodge thinks he can win anyway, though polls show him stuck at 1 percent, with some 15 percent undecided. In last year's presidential race, he ran under the Green Party banner, pulling in 3 percent of the vote nationally, and 1.7 percent in pivotal Florida. With Murphy and O'Connor separated by only a few percentage points in the polls, Hodge and Pollock loom similarly large. In 1997, Democratic candidate Chaston Roston had neither of those advantages when he battled Murphy and O'Connor, and he took 4.6 percent of the vote.
Conventional wisdom holds that multiple challengers tend to split the anti-incumbent vote.
Voters suffering from Murphy fatigue, who might otherwise pull O'Connor's lever, may gravitate to Hodge or Pollock instead. At candidate forums, though, Hodge and Pollock have bruised the mayor. When Hodge rails against police brutality, he's railing against Murphy 's police. Hodge and Pollock do it for him, potentially tarring Murphy in some voters' eyes. The wild card is the black vote.