Erik Paulsen’s pals are up to no good.
DFL candidate Ashwin Madia’s campaign says it has received numerous reports of so-called “push polling” from voters in the district. Push polls masquerade as scientific polls, but are actually telemarketing efforts designed to disseminate negative messages about a candidate.
In a press release the campaign said the calls “distorted Madia’s position on Iraq and falsely stated that Madia was impeached when he was the president of the University of Minnesota student body.”
Campaign Manager Stu Rosenberg sent a letter to his counterpart at Republican Erik Paulsen’s campaign calling on Paulsen to disavow the tactics.
Push polling is an especially unsavory campaign tactic because it involves several layers of deception. The first lie involves the identity of the caller. The person receiving the call is led to believe that the caller is an unbiased source when in fact he is anything but. Second, as in this case, the “poll” itself usually consists of several lies. For example, the caller might ask “Would you be less likely to support candidate X if you knew he beat his wife?” Push polling is the worst of American politics, just ask John McCain.
Unfortunately, push polling is hard to combat. You can go to the press, but reporters often want to report on the content of the call, which makes the whole effort self-defeating from the push-polling victim’s perspective because the press accounts will just spread the lie (just look at various mainstream stories written about the email rumor campaign against Barack Obama). Hopefully the Twin Cities media will be more reasonable (as MPR was) and report on the existence of the push poll without insisting on reporting the contents of the call.
One last thing on this subject. The Paulsen campaign has tried to turn this back on Madia by claiming that AFSCME is push polling against Paulsen on Madia’s behalf. This is a silly accusation.
Eliot Seide, executive director of Minnesota AFSCME Council 5, says his organization is not push-polling in the 3rd Congressional District. He says AFSCME members are calling other AFSCME members, urging them to support Madia, and he says the phone bank script does not even mention Erik Paulsen.
Not every phone call a voter recieves is a push poll and the AFSCME calls certainly don’t fit the profile.
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