State’s 92nd District House race gets hotter with push-polling
By Nick Claussen
July 31, 2008
The campaign for the local seat in the Ohio House of Representatives is starting to heat up.
The two candidates for the 92nd District seat in the Ohio House say they want to run positive campaigns and talk about the issues, but “push-polling,” a negative campaign tactic, is allegedly already being used against each candidate.
The two candidates, Democrat Debbie Phillips and Republican Jill Thompson, both have said they don’t know who might be doing push polling, and both insist their campaigns are not involved.
A July 10 letter to the editor from Athens resident Ann Fugate stated that Fugate received a phone call from a company that identified itself as ProMark Research, which said it was surveying attitudes about candidates in the upcoming election. After a series of questions, the caller “read a number of statements portraying Ms. Phillips in a negative way, asking how likely I was to vote for her given this damaging information,” Fugate wrote in the letter. She added that she considered the pretend survey to be “pure sleaze” intended to try to make Phillips look bad.
Athens NEWS Editor Terry Smith confirmed that he received a similar call at his home around the same time that Fugate received her call, but that the ProMark Research surveyor said he couldn’t survey Smith after learning he worked for a newspaper.
A July 17 letter to the editor from Shawn Morris of Athens said that Morris also received a call, which she thought might be from the same company, for a push poll.
“Many questions were based on negative ‘facts’ about both candidates and were worded in a way that made it difficult to answer in a positive manner for ether candidate,” Morris wrote in the letter, adding that the questions about Thompson were blatantly false. Morris added that similar “tired distortions” were used against Thompson in her 2006 campaign for Athens County auditor.
A representative from ProMark, which is based in Houston, would only confirm last week that the company does political surveys. However, she would not answer questions about whether the company was conducting phone surveys in Athens County and who was paying for the surveys.
The company’s Web site states that the company requires its interviewers “to complete an intensive training program, where they are taught sound interviewing methodology, techniques to reduce bias, proper probing skills, methods to overcome refusals, and use of rebuttals to improve refusal conversion.”
ProMark has been identified in newspaper articles around the country, though, for conducting political polling that some people have referred to as push polling. Most of the references to the company’s polling found on Google involved work on behalf of Republican candidates.
Push polls have been roundly criticized by public survey and polling organizations such as the American Association for Public Opinion Research, which put out a statement in 2007 about these polls.
“’Push polls’ are not surveys at all, but rather unethical political telemarketing – telephone calls disguised as research that aim to persuade large number of votes and affect election outcomes, rather than measure opinions,” according to the statement.
PHILLIPS SAID last week that her campaign has not been conducting any push polling or negative campaigning.
“I don’t know who all might be doing that,” That’s not really the approach I would take to anything,” Phillips said. However, she said she would not be surprised to see negative campaigning used against her, as Republicans used smears and distortions against her in her 2006 campaign for the Ohio House.
“I won’t be surprised if the Republicans used those strategies again,” Phillips said. She added that there is a lot of interest across the state in this race, and that she is focusing her campaign on getting out to talk to district residents and listen to their concerns. She is discussing issues such as bringing jobs to the region and improving access to health care, Phillips said.
THOMPSON SAID that her campaign is also not conducting any push polling or negative campaigning. She has been told, though, that two polls are being done that speak negatively about her, Thompson said.
In past campaigns against Democrats in Athens County, the campaigning against her has gotten negative, she added.
“I’ve run against (Athens County Democratic Party Chair) Susan Gwinn twice,” Thompson said, referring to Gwinn’s assistance in races involving local Democrats. “I don’t expect them to run a positive campaign.”
She also does not expect the Democrats to run against her on the facts and the issues, which is what she wants to be discussing in the campaign, Thompson said.
Thompson said she also is going out to talk to people in the district about the issues, and said she is enthusiastic about the response she has been receiving from district residents.
Even though Phillips and Thompson say they’re not push-polling, in modern politics it’s not unusual for the party apparatus or third-party groups to get involved in negative campaigning, whether the candidates explicitly approve or not. This could explain who’s responsible for the apparent push-polling, if neither candidate is actually using this sort of tactic.
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