Survey floats Senate replacements

Peninsula Clarion | September 5, 2008

Alaska Democrats charged Thursday that an Oregon-based phone survey company was engaging in shady push polling that appeared designed to encourage a vote for Sen. Ted Stevens, but also floated the names of possible replacements for the indicted senator in the November general election.

Stevens was recently indicted on seven federal felony counts of failing to disclose more than $250,000 in gifts and services from VECO. A trial is scheduled for Sept. 24 in federal court in Washington, D.C. The Republican Party has until Sept. 17 to replace Stevens on the ballot.

Bethany Lesser, spokeswoman for the Alaska Democratic Party, said her office had heard from several Anchorage-area residents who reported getting push-poll calls from RDD Field Services informing them that Gov. Sarah Palin, now the vice presidential nominee for the Republic Party, had endorsed Stevens’ re-election.

RDD Field Services also made calls on the Kenai Peninsula.

According to Lesser, the surveyors floated at least two names, including former gubernatorial candidate John Binkley, of Fairbanks, and long-time Alaska entrepreneur Mead Treadwell, as possible replacements, should that become necessary.

But the survey seemed geared to move respondents in a particular direction, Lesser said. According to those contacting Lesser’s office, those surveyed were asked if Palin’s endorsement would lead them to vote for Stevens.

“Does the Alaska Republican Party know something the rest of us don’t?” Lesser said.

She noted Palin’s claim to the label of reformer who targets corruption in Alaska, and that that image does not square with a formal endorsement of Stevens.

Palin, however, has not formally endorsed Stevens, according to ARP spokesman McHugh Pierre, who said he had no idea who might have hired RDD Field Services or who was paying their fee. Stevens handily won the Republican Party primary and his re-election bid has the full backing of the party, Pierre said.

“Stevens is in it to win,” he said.

A call to Sen. John McCain’s regional campaign office in Las Vegas, which handles west coast areas, reached regional spokesman Rick Gorka, who confirmed that Palin had not formally endorsed Stevens. He acknowledged the political ramifications surrounding such an endorsement at this time, given Palin’s corruption-fighting image.

According to Lesser, RDD Field Services is well-known for fielding misleading telephone surveys, often called push polls, which she called a negative campaign tactic designed to sound legitimate, but actually is “an attempt to spread false information about a race.”

RDD Field Services is the new name of a subsidiary to Market Decisions Corp., a company based in Oregon that has been in the market research business for about 30 years.

Doug Verigin, chief of operations for MDC, said the company acquired some assets of a company called Research Data Design Inc., which went out of business last year, along with the rights to the name. RDD Inc. was re-tabbed RDD Field Services.

While the majority of Market Decisions’ survey work is outside the political realm, RDD Field Services does much more political polling, Verigin said. He confirmed that RDD Field Services was conducting a poll, but said that privacy considerations prevented him from revealing the company’s client, or anything about the results.

Asked if he thought the poll amounted to push polling, Verigin said push polling was hard to define.

“The main difference is if you go out with the intention of calling as many people as possible to get a certain message out in the guise of a survey, that’s probably a push poll,” he said. “If you have a series of questions and are asking a predetermined sample of people, called a representative sample, that really doesn’t qualify as a push poll.”

A random representative sampling of a population is likely too small a number — perhaps in the hundreds — to effectively influence the outcome of, say, an election.

“It’s a limited number of people. The impact is not that great,” he said.

Verigin said he did not know how many Alaskans RDD Field Services had called or whether they are through with the survey.

Aaron Saunders, spokesman for the Stevens campaign, said he had not heard of the poll.

“Our campaign is not at all associated with it,” Saunders said.

Reached on the Republican convention floor in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Treadwell said he had commissioned no survey, and that he hoped Stevens was found innocent and re-elected.

“If there is a vacant Senate seat, I might run,” he said, adding that “if there aren’t more names on the list besides John and me, the survey takers are missing a lot of talent.”

A call to Binkley was not immediately returned Thursday afternoon.