EDITORIAL: Press's Reaction to Oliverio's Own Poll is Lame
We've seen some remarkable political phenomena in our day, but the mileage gained by a
rather pedestrian partisan poll in the First Congressional District takes the cake. First
a little background.
Hamilton Strategies is a rather obscure Democratic political consulting firm out of a place called Fernandina Beach, Florida. Heard of it yet? The firm seems to deal exclusively with Democrats, openly billing itself as the nation's "oldest partisan consulting firm." The firm changed its name to Hamilton Strategies in 2007 but doesn't tell us on their website what their former name was.
The polling results from this Democratic outfit from Fernandina Beach, Florida, performed for the Democratic First District Congressional nominee, Mike Oliverio were no surprise when they were announced in early August. The results showed a double digit lead for Mike Oliverio over his Republican opponent, David McKinley.
As Gomer Pyle would say, "Surprise, surprise, surprise!"
But what is surprising is how much ink this clearly partisan effort has received from newspapers around the First Congressional District and even the usually restrained "Statewide Talkline" show on the Metronews Radio Network. There the Hamilton Strategies representatives were treated to a puff interview with no hard questions about the poll. What's up with that?
"Any poll that only interviewed 400 likely voters is certainly open to scrutiny," said Jack Ellis, a political consultant from Putnam County. "But look. Everyone was doing their job here. This Hamilton Strategies may be fine folks, but I don't think they're as well-known as, say, Garin-Hart. But they're unapologetically Democratic, and they were no doubt thrilled to do this for another Democrat like Oliverio. Who's surprised by any of this? The people aren't fools."
"What's priceless, however, is how some of the West Virginia media just did Oliverio's work for him by giving this poll such credibility," continued Ellis. "Anyone worth their salt as a political reporter would have to ask questions about the meaning of a poll in the early going with a 4.9% margin of error. This is not like a poll of 800 likely voters with a 3.5% margin of error."
"But members of the West Virginia press dutifully included even the Oliverio's campaign's absurdist commentary in which the candidate tells us with a straight face how "humbled" he is by the results of his own poll," said Ellis. "That's a riot, and if you read the D.C. political websites like "Hotline" and their coverage of this, you'll notice they leave all the silly comments like that out of it. Respected political news organizations like "Hotline" and "Roll Call" don't do propaganda. They just report what's going on with both sides of a race. They aren't pushing one candidate over another in their reporting."
We trust that the public is not as easily fooled by such drama productions by the Oliverio campaign as some of our press seem to be. And we're sure that McKinley's donors are glad that their man is saving their money for something more substantial as the race moves forward into the fall.