(Updated) Shake-Ups, Strategies, And Apparent Confessions
Fall-Out From The Mayoral Primary
Note: This post has been updated. Any and all updates appear at the end of the original post.
Yesterday, we wondered about changes in the Mayoral race in the aftermath of Tom Potter besting Jim Francesconi in Tuesday's primary election. Appropriately enough, that's the main subject of a story in The Oregonian today.
It would seem that Francesconi is promising three things: Lower fundraising, better communication, and community organizing. Of course, it's not inconceivable that lower fundraising will reult naturally from the fact that those who contributed such large amounts to his primary campaign nwo realize that it didn't get them very much. On the same subject, the article also has this laugh-riot charmer:
Francesconi questioned Potter's commitment to campaign-finance reform with the higher limit but said he will not match Potter's challenge to restrict his own donations to $100.
Yes, you read that right. The poster-boy for obscene amounts of money in local politics challenged Potter's commitment to campaign finance reform because Potter raised his self-imposed contribution limits from $25 per person to $100 per person. A new limit, not to incidentally, which puts Potter's campaign in line with a proposed statewide contribution limit (and one which the Phil Busse campaign had already been using), and which Francesconi has refused to match. Two days after an election which proved that Francesconi just doesn't get it, and he's already returned to demonstrating that he just doesn't get it.
While there appears to be a general consensus amongst campaign watchers that Francesconi needs to shake up his campaign staff, it might behoove his camp to realize that if the candidate themselves still doesn't understand, they might have a difficult time making any new strategy work properly.
Also in this Oregonian article is a bit about what Busse and James Posey might do in terms of endorsing one of the remaining candidates. They report that Posey leans towards Potter, with reservations, and Busse wants to site down with both of them and see which one will put his campaign's issues on the table.
Meanwhile, also in The Oregonian, columnist Steve Duin offers his analysis which happens to include this:
The nadir of the campaign may have been questions about the death of Nathan Thomas tendered by McGuire Research in phone polling. Grosswiler finally conceded Wednesday that while "the candidate said we are not going to do negative campaigning, the consultant said we have to test your vulnerabilities and your opponent's vulnerabilities.
"We did thorough research."
That's Ed Grosswiler, by the way. The spokesperson from the Francesconi camapign who showed up in the comments here to try to drum up negatives against Potter for a campaign contribution snafu -- not that they engaged in negative campaigning, of course.
What remains unclear to us about the above, however, is that a previous news report indicated that while the Francesconi campaign earlier refused to cop to the McGuire push poll, they did cop to what was termed a more "scientific poll" that included questions about the Nathan Thomas matter. So is what Duin refers to here as a concession a new reference to the McGuire push poll itself, or merely a repetition of the admission of the "scientific" poll?
That needs to be cleared up. It's important to know with certainty whether or not the Francesconi campaign agreed to have a push poll conducted. If they did, that in and of itself is negative campaigning, since push polls are specifically designed to plant negatives about a candidate in the minds of voters.
Disclosure: PORTLAND COMMUNIQUE accepts political advertisements, and currently runs ads from candidates mentioned in this item.
Update
A clarification is needed. The Francesconi campaign did not, in fact, concede to having conducted a "scientific poll" (apparently unrelated to the McGuire push poll). What we were thinking of was this "City Matters" column from May 14:
Grove says she won't discuss what questions are being asked but that she doesn't do push polls and that all of Francesconi's positive ads to date speak for themselves.
Francesconi's campaign, however, won't confirm or deny whether they conducted a more scientific public opinion poll that tested voter reaction to Potter's being unreachable on vacation after Nathan was shot. They say they won't talk about their polls.
And a May 12 Willamette Week item had this about the McGuire poll:
Some Potter partisans call this a "push poll," invoking the disreputable use of polling as pretext for spreading negative information. To us, it looks more like someone's trawling for negative ad fodder--for use, say, in a head-to-head November runoff with Potter. The folks at McGuire aren't talking. A spokesman for the well-funded campaign of front-runner Jim Francesconi says the campaign hasn't hired McGuire or engaged in any push-polling to sully Potter's name.
So we reiterate our question: Just what is it that Grosswiler now concedes the Francesconi campaign did when it came to polls and the Nathan Thomas matter? One possibility is that the "scientific" poll and the McGuire poll in fact are one and the same, but the Francesconi camp has been trying to avoid admitting it qualifies as a push poll. But it all remains unclear to us at this point.
Update
Just in is the following from Steve Duin, who we emailed to try to nail down just what the Francesconi campaign is talking about, whether these two polls are one and the same, and just what they did or did not cop to:
Actually, it's just another incremental step in the campaign's laborious process required to come clean on the issue.
I told Francesconi that I wanted a complete denial or a concession, reminding him that he can't repudiate something he won't admit to. Francesconi had Grosswiler call me. Once we got past the semantics of whether or not this was a "push poll," Grosswiler answered a similar demand for the unvarnished truth with the quotes in the column.
He also said, "Jim made it clear that there was not going to be any negative campaigning coming out of this. Every bit was to be positive. Jim made that very clear; the political consultants pushed back and said we need to ... Jim said you can test everything, we are not going negative."
You can test everything.
And they did.
So I suppose we're down to arguing over the definitions not only of the term "push poll" but also of the word "negative." Then again, we've already weighed in with our opinion (see above) on whether or not they went negative during the primary campaign.
May 20, 2004 at 01:42 PM
The important thing to find out is how many people they called for this "scientific poll".
I've spoken to several people who got a call, and so I suspect they called thousands of people.
That would make it a push poll, because that kind of effort is expensive and no one in their right mind would call thousands when, say, 400 would give you a good sample.
May 20, 2004 at 02:27 PM
I was told that a "push poll" is inexpensive. Because it is more of a telemarketing campaign there are no stats tracked, and so it costs only a few cents a call.
May 20, 2004 at 02:58 PM
Thank you Marko for finally asking the important question which will clarify the issue (and which this site hasn't bothered to investigate until now)
May 20, 2004 at 03:19 PM
pdx reporter: That was Marko's point. Calling 5000 people for an actual scientific survey would be prohibitively expensive. Calling 5000 people for a "push poll" is relatively cheap.
Therefore, if they actually called 5000 people, it stands to reason that they were not tracking any statistics at all and this was, in fact, a push poll.
May 20, 2004 at 03:27 PM
Thanks for the civics lesson "no one in particular." My simple point was that there is an easy way to tell if this was in fact a push poll and yet no one has asked that question. You and many others have just assumed 5000 people were called, when in fact you have no idea.
May 20, 2004 at 03:42 PM
Huh? I was just trying to re-explain what Marko was saying because pdx reporter didn't seem to understand. (Or maybe his comment was actually reply to the story and not to Marko? I'm not sure.)
Show me in my comment where I assumed that 5000 people were called? "If they actually called 5000 people" is all I ever said, which seems like a pretty clear anti-assumption to me.
I feel like you're being kind of a dick for some reason, when all I was doing was agreeing with you and Marko that it's an important question for someone to find out.
May 20, 2004 at 04:12 PM
It's not difficult to imagine, based on Grossweiler's squirrelly responses, that this was in fact a push poll.
He's attempting to isolate Francesconi from the decision, by claiming that it was the consultant that made this call. But give me a break. Are you telling me the candidate doesn't sign off on this decision? That's ridiculous.
By saying that Jim gave them authority to "test anything," it clearly opens up the door to Jim directly approving the push poll.
Again, the bottom line is how many people they called. I'm not a statistician, but surely someone can figure out how many people you would have to call to get a representative sample.
If they called thousands of people, then it's obvious their goal was to plant these dark and evil thoughts in peoples' minds...i.e. that Tom Potter was somehow indifferent to the death of Nathan Thomas.
The fact that they're even testing stuff like this is utterly reprehensible, but with an answer on how many people they called we'll find out if their only goal was to pollute the entire electorate with this trash.
Bush's team used the same dirty tactics against McCain in South Carolina. I think it comes out of the old Lee Atwater playbook. They told people that John McCain was mentally unstable because of the time he spent as a POW, and that he was the father of an illegitimate black child (Senator McCain and his wife have an adopted child).
These slanderous push polls are the dirtiest thing going in politics, and I think the public discussion would benefit from more complete disclosure on just what tactics the campaigns are employing.
Let's hope we don't see any more of this between now and November, but I'm not optimistic.
May 20, 2004 at 05:46 PM
Hey Steve....thanks for using my e-mail :/
May 20, 2004 at 06:18 PM
He's attempting to isolate Francesconi from the decision, by claiming that it was the consultant that made this call. But give me a break. Are you telling me the candidate doesn't sign off on this decision? That's ridiculous.
Well, if you remember back when KXL and KATU reported that the Francesconi campaign was spending large amounts of money outside the state despite Francesconi's "I'm good for local small business" message, the candidate showed up on television claiming he didn't know it was happening and it would not happen again.
At the very least, even if we gave Francesconi the benefit of the doubt and assumed for the sake of argument that he didn't know about any of these thigns, it opens up an obvious question: Do we want a Mayor who doesn't know what his staff is doing in his name?
The fact that they're even testing stuff like this is utterly reprehensible, but with an answer on how many people they called we'll find out if their only goal was to pollute the entire electorate with this trash.
And that's why this isn't an issue they can dodge. An admission that they even "tested" (as if that were somehow an innocuous act) this matter is an admission that they believe this sort of campaign behavior is a legitimate way of conducting politics. And it again opens the above question: Is this the sort of mindset we want sitting in the Mayor's office?
May 21, 2004 at 10:11 AM
Jim Francesconi needs to limit his campaign contibutions to $100.00 and then his friends need to form a PAC to take donations for him, they can call it GOJimGO! Actually, I think I would rather he just be honest about the $$ his campaign has instead of hiding behind a PAC. Just my take.
May 26, 2004 at 09:43 AM
Does that last post represent an orchestrated effort by the Francesconi campaign?Seems quite like one I saw recently on the indymedia site and it sounds so much like Francesconi campaign logic.
Hiding? PACs have to report contributions just like candidates do.
Even though Tom didn't set up or authorize the PAC, feel free to add the GoPotterGo numbers to Tom's numbers when you compare fundraising.
According to the latest report posted by the auditor's office, GoPotterGo collected $3250.
Of course, that's only the 2nd pre-election report. Maybe they matched Jim's estimated million bucks in the last two weeks of the campaign.