Funny Polling

Lou Barletta is alleging that there is some funny phone "polling" going around his district that is too conveniently biased against him.

The calls, which Barletta explicitly referred to as "push polls," are designed to shape public opinion by disseminating negative information regarding one candidate while at the same time seeking to clarify or mask potential negatives about the opposing candidate.

These particular push polls sought to promulgate negative information by specifically discussing Barletta selling his business to a "convicted drug felon" and cutting back the police force while "blood rolled down the gutters of Hazleton."

Kanjorski campaign spokesman Ed Mitchell denied any involvement in the push polls and criticized the Barletta campaign for making an issue out of it. Mitchell even went further stating, "But Lou Barletta could at least act like a man and stop crying, whining and complaining every time someone calls him on his record."

It seems that the DCCC could likely be behind the polls. The polls originated out of Miami, Florida with a company called Sun Survey. The DCCC declined to say whether they were conducting their own survey survey. DCCC spokeswoman Carrie James said, "We’re not running a push poll. … It’s not ours … I don’t know anything about a cameraman." However, it could be as simple as the DCCC not viewing what they are doing as push polling and refusing to acknowledge it as such.

Barletta also got some more negative press thrown his way in a New York Times story today. The story cites an authority who regards Barletta's "inflammatory" anti-immigration rhetoric as a possible factor in the death of a illegal Mexican immigrant. Barletta responded in the story by saying: "It’s a tragedy what happened to that man. But I don’t believe our ordinance had anything to do with it. Every person is responsible for their own actions."