UPDATE-- Push-Poll in Medford-Ashland State Senate campaign

There is a smoking gun. 

Culprit? National Research.

The question is whether it is the right smoking gun.

One thing we can do is follow the money.

Here is what we know:

1. At least seven local citizens got called for an opinion poll. All seven were surprised and unhappy at the harshness and dishonesty of some of the statements in the poll attributed to Jeff Golden and Jessica Gomez. The citizens were familiar enough with the candidates that they knew the statements to have been flatly dishonest.  

2. All of the local citizens suspected it might not be a poll at all, but rather a negative hit piece, intended to insert negative, dishonest information, on both candidates.

3. We can track the money that might have paid for this, using the State of Oregon's tracking system: Click  On the left is "Transaction Purpose". Scroll down within that box to "Surveys and Polls" then click "Search."

One of the top polling expenditures was paid by "No Supermajorities PAC" for an amount of $14,850. The line looks like this.

Clicking on the magnifying glass icon for detail shows it was a Survey for SD3, and it was done by a company called "National Research" of Hazlet, New Jersey. The detail looks like this:

That looks promising. Did either candidate show this as an in-kind contribution?

Yes. 

There is no sign of it for Jeff Golden, but for Jessica Gomez we see a $14,850 in-kind contribution. It looks like this: 

What kind of firm is National Research of Hazlet, New Jersey? Their website says they are in the "opinion management business" and the very top tab for their array of services is "AD TESTING."

http://www.nationalresearchinc.com

That was exactly what the nasty push-poll was ostensibly doing--testing which statements might get people to change their minds.

Right time. Right amount of money. Right purpose. And the firm that does the work advertises itself as doing exactly what the push-poll did. 

The smoking gun.

Maybe.

I brought this information to the attention of Alan DeBoer. I said it looked very suspicious.  

DeBoer had told me he was confident that this company with the in kind contribution to Jessica Gomez was not the firm--well, "90% sure."  It must be someone else, he said. He observed that, yes, he is actively raising money for the No Supermajority PAC, but we didn't contract for a nasty push-poll.

I said I would contact National Research personally (I have a call into them) but I suspected they are unwilling to discuss the poll with me. I said it makes sense that this is the source of the push-poll--assuming political activity is reported, as is required by law.

In a second conversation yesterday DeBoer said that he had--in hand--a copy of the questions that were asked in the $14,850 poll. He said they did not contain the push-poll questions that he heard on the phone. But he acknowledged that he gets lied to all the time in politics, and we are never quite sure what we know. Someone presumably paid for the negative push-poll.

Maybe it was a rogue pollster. Or maybe an independent prankster, he wondered, who wouldn't report it. Could Curt Ankerberg have done it?  

Curt Ankerberg is a very talented, motivated, politically active advocate and provocateur--someone sharply critical of both Golden and Gomez. He ran for this seat and lost narrowly to Gomez. Ankerberg has written critically of both candidates in the comment section here on this blog. Ankerberg is highly intelligent and sophisticated, and he has a pattern of working with aliases and anonymously when doing political advocacy. I said the "random" call to the office of John Watt's public affairs consultancy was curious because Ankerberg mentions Watt and the Chamber of Commerce by name as local malefactors and crony capitalists. I think he would consider them a fun target. Ankerberg would be capable of pulling this off, but it would have required him to have arranged for a variety of callers, including people whose first language did not appear to be English, and have arranged for scores of calls in order to have had seven people--five of whom are not closely tied to politics--to notice and complain.

Golden

It could be Ankerberg--or some other provocateur--but I think the single most straightforward explanation of the push-poll is that this is yet one more example of what happens every cycle in this District--out of control upstate interference in the election, and that DeBoer is being lied to.

The well-established pattern is that political operatives and vendors consider Medford-Ashland candidates too naive and squeamish to do politics correctly--to play real hardball with negative campaigns--so they write ads, do mailers, film TV commercials, and do polls that are "for our own good to get the win."  They ask for forgiveness, not permission.

The upstate funders and vendors are not very concerned about who gets hurt down here. They think they have evidence to show that negative campaigning works. All is fair in love and political warfare. So they do hard negative stuff in an effort to win, and think to insulate the candidates by keeping them at arms length.

In recent history this has backfired badly. Their activity has been so extreme and dishonest that they have hurt the reputations of the supposed beneficiary, Jim Wright, David Dotterer, Tonia Moro. Each ended up needing to try to explain away ad campaigns and political activity done on their behalf, and were left with admitting they were dishonest or else admitting they were inept and careless in being unable to control what was done on their behalf.

Gomez

Maybe this kerfuffle will cause upstate vendors and out of state polling firms to be more aware of the potential political cost to hijacking local campaigns. And it is a head's up to the candidates Golden and Gomez. Watch out for your friends. 

It is your reputation on the line, not theirs.

No one knows or cares about the name or reputation of Adam Geller, the owner of the polling firm National Research, Inc., whose face is at the top of this page. The firm did work for Chris Christie, now Trump and the No Supermajority PAC. Maybe they were the culprit, but in any case they move on. The candidates will still live right here. The name local people will remember is the candidate on whose behalf the dirty work was done. The stink lingers.

I will keep trying to get to the bottom of this.



UPDATE FROM CURT ANKERBERG.  Since I mention him by name as a person of suspicion,  I am adding this immediate response by Ankerberg.

"I can assure you that I had zero to do with this political poll. Al DeBoer and his friends did it. Follow the money. Never trust a DeBoer. If DeBoer inferred that I was involved, then he's lying.

I'm a conservative republican, and both Golden and Gomez are liberal democrats, so of course I oppose their politics, but nevertheless, for this particular senate election, I support Jeff Golden, and I hope that Jeff Golden wins. I encourage all conservatives to abstain from voting for liberal Gomez.

Golden may be liberal, but Gomez is out-and-out criminal. Gomez represents "bought government" and "influence peddling". She's the "front man" for special interest groups. Gomez is a liar, too. She's well-aware of these polls. For me, bought government is a bigger threat than liberalism. Corporations (and unions) can out-spend individuals, and they are creating an environment whereby government serves them, and not people. If Gomez gets elected, then you'll see more of your tax dollars being spent to pay for the Chamber of Commerce's private developments (corporate welfare)."