Having a push poll start this early with the recharachterization of the issues so blatantly false should be a large wake up call about our priorities. Can we please see who the enemy is and how they use the ignorance of the issues by most folks to win. Bush is not the enemy he is just a skilled fighter that knows what and who he is fighting. I think we all need to get a better prespective on what we are up against.
So, anyone have advise on how to fight back on a push poll ?
He lost my vote, and I hope he loses. He's no conservative.
Area code 215 is in the Philly area. There is a polling firm located in Media, PA - I'm betting that's who conducted the poll.
Please remind me what the bill was that Congress declared war in. Oh, that's right Congress never declared war. Thanks, have a nice statist day.
---max
Work for your candidate (if conservatives become more involved with his campaign, and he's not a big commie lib like Jeffords, then we will have more say in his votes down the road even though he's not hardcore)
Write a letter to the editor. Write several. If you're a good writer, or have a small paper (or several small papers), write an op-ed about the push poll. Do a little research and don't rave, but lay out your argument so any "reasonable" person will see that it's ridiculous.
Vote, and get involved in GOTV.
It appears that the democrats have begun early, and in full swing. Usually the strategy is to firm up your base, then go after the unaffiliated voters and then go after the opponent's base.
It is apparent that they intend to target Simmons this election, meaning that the democrats intend to pump a lot of money into that particular contest. Simmons is not a conservative, but the alternate choice is worse. Yeah, its war.
How do you know its a push poll and not the candidate's campaign trying to figure out the likely attacks he's going to hear from the democrats? You have to know your own weaknesses before you can defend them. Don't be so hysterical. It's way too early for push polls.
I don't care if he's George Washington reincarnate...screw him.
Definitely sounds like a push poll to me. Its a bit early for these normally, but then again people will experiment with new things to see how they work. Getting people angry at Simmons early may level out early poll numbers, making the Dem. look more attractive and making it easier for him to raise funds.
As to how to fight back? Keep the pollster on the line as long as possible. Sounds like you may have done some of that. Keep them busy. If they spend 30 minutes on the phone with you, that is 15 fewer people they can call.
patent (patented's spouse)
As to the Enron thing, his vote was for a tax cut for all companies.
As to the school building issues he had no idea what they were talking about. In the CT legislature he supported school building. His only guess was they were targeting a procedural bill.
As to the HMO's and the elderly he said he he supported a local CT bill of rights when in state legislature and he also supported a federal bill of rights.
He again personally thanked me for advising him about the push poll because it helps him to see which way they are coming at him.
Mr. Simmons,
For what its worth I told the Courtnery campaign I was disappointed in the push polls. The manager said she knew nothing about them, they did not order them and implied she would try and stop them if they knew who they were from.
She then advised me you were the beneficiary of push polls and other dirty tricks in the last election because a poll that insinuated that Sam Gedjensen was having an affair. According to her you did not take sufficient steps to stop that and consequently she apparently doesn't see it wrong to be the beneficary of the negative polling as long as they haven't a direct connection to them. Apparently what was good for you then by the NRC is good for her now by the DNC.
Ray
LOL!
‘Last Battle of Cold War’
"Rest easy. We finally got him!"
When State Sen. Tony Guglielmo (R.) of Stafford Springs, Conn., called with those words last week, I didn’t have to ask what he was talking about. By fewer than 2,000 votes out of more than 223,000 cast, GOP State Rep. Rob Simmons had unseated 20-year Rep. Sam Gejdenson, ranking Demo-crat on the House International Relations Committee, in the Nutmeg State’s 2nd District.
For Guglielmo, the results were particularly heartening. In 1980, as a young insuranceman and first-time candidate, Guglielmo was the first of a string of Republicans to go up against Gejdenson, losing a tight battle for the Eastern Connecticut district that then-Rep. Christopher Dodd (D.) had vacated to run successfully for the U.S. Senate. Over the next two decades, Gejdenson’s margins would range from landslides in 1986 and ’88 to an extremely narrow (21 votes) escape from defeat in 1994–the closest House race in the nation.
Symbolically, his loss two weeks ago at the hands of Simmons was, as one conservative stalwart put it, "the last battle of the Cold War." A onetime anti-Vietnam War protester at the University of Connecticut who cut his political eyeteeth in the 1970 U.S. Senate race of former Americans for Democratic Action Chairman Joseph Duffey (now Bill Clinton’s head of the U.S. Information Agency), Gejdenson (lifetime American Conservative Union rating: 5%) in his years on the International Relations Committee made no bones about his sympathies for leftist regimes from Angola to South America.
In contrast, the 57-year-old Simmons is a proud U.S. Army veteran who rose from private to colonel in the reserves and won two Bronze Stars in Vietnam. He also served as a Central Intelligence Agency operative in Southeast Asia (where he mastered Chinese, French and Vietnamese) and as staff director of the Senate Intelligence Committee before winning his legislative seat in 1990.
Although much of the Simmons-Gejdenson contest focused on local issues, many believe the outcome was determined by the sharply disparate backgrounds of the candidates.
‘Unacceptable’
When most observers on the right see the phrase "Connecticut Republican," they immediately assume "not conservative." Sure enough, Rob Simmons takes the line of virtually all GOP officeholders in the state, saying he is "moderate on social issues and conservative on economic issues"–meaning that he is "pro-choice" on abortion. However, the GOP nominee did point to his record in the state legislature, where he supported Republican Gov. John Rowland’s tax cuts and called for scrapping the estate tax and the marriage penalty, and in the campaign he attacked Gejdenson’s support of gun control–a key issue in a district with small bucolic towns where hunting is very popular.
Simmons also benefited from the publication of Without Reservation, a book about Indian tribes’ acquisition of land in Connecticut and gaining the status of a virtually independent nation. According to author Jeff Benedict, Gejdenson had worked closely with former Gov. (1990-94) Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. (Independent) to pave the way for Pequot Indians to come from Maine to Eastern Connecticut, establish casinos, and be free of state taxes–all of which has made many longtime area residents very uncomfortable.
Gejdenson even helped make it possible, Benedict observed, for anyone with the slightest claim of Pequot blood to be part of the "nation," in contrast to the restrictions in Maine. Without Reservation has been selling well throughout Eastern Connecticut and, sources say, provided a boost for Simmons. The town of Ledyard, home of one of the Pequot-run casinos, has been reliably Democratic, but this time voted 3 to 1 for the Republican candidate.
Because he won the GOP nod without opposition, Simmons was able to raise money early and be competitive with Gejdenson throughout their contest. When a suddenly desperate incumbent launched last-minute media salvoes suggesting that Simmons had voted for placing toxic waste near public schools, the Republican immediately countered with spots showing an attractive young woman pointing out that the accusation was a malicious twisting of votes Simmons had cast in Hartford. When you know Simmons, "you’ll love him as much as I do," concludes the young lady–who is Simmons’ daughter.
But what may well have ensured Gejdenson’s defeat was an attempt by two of his staffers in the week before the election to "shop" to the media a story that Simmons, while in uniform in Vietnam, had been guilty of William Calley-style "war crimes." The staffers’ flimsy "evidence," it turned out, was a years-old newspaper interview in which Simmons mentioned his days as a U.S. advisor to the South Vietnamese police and recalled how the police would not feed Communist prisoners unless they cooperated and provided information–theoretically a "war crime," but something that advisor Simmons had nothing to do with.
Simmons struck back hard, opening his entire record overseas to the press. Much of the area media condemned Gejdenson for peddling the story, and the embattled congressman fired the two staffers. Then, on the weekend before the balloting, Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain hit Connecticut and joined up with Simmons in a string of appearances to denounce the opposition’s attack as "unacceptable."
"It saddens me because a lot of us since we returned from Vietnam have worked hard to heal the wounds of a war that divided this country," declared the visibly angry former Vietnam POW.
Even though he took out a veteran Democratic incumbent in the Northeast, is Simmons’ win really a net gain for conservatives? "Look, Rob Simmons is not going to be Dick Cheney in the House because the Northeast is not exactly Wyoming," says Tony Guglielmo. "I would guess that he’s going to be more conservative than our two sitting Republican House members [Chris Shays and Nancy Johnson]. We worked together on a lot of things in the legislature and I know that Rob is very skeptical of big government doing things individuals can do on their own. And when you consider whom he unseated, you become very forgiving of some ‘unconservative’ things that might be in his record."
Samuel Pierce, R.I.P.
Despite frequent reminders in the media that several of his associates at the Department of Urban Development were convicted of corruption and influence-peddling charges and that Ronald Reagan did not recognize his own cabinet member at a meeting of municipal leaders and called him "Mr. Mayor," Samuel Riley Pierce was highly admired by conservatives, who mourned his death October 31 following a stroke. Pierce, the lone Reagan cabinet member to serve all eight years of the 40th President’s tenure, had made good on the conservative pledge to roll back government. He oversaw the slashing of his department’s budget from $26 billion in 1981 to $8 billion in 1989 and the elimination of such controversial, pork-laden programs as UDAG grants.
New Yorker Pierce, who was black, had lived an eventful life of achievement before he joined the cabinet. A graduate of Cornell University, where he was a star athlete, Pierce served in the U.S. Army in World War II and, following his discharge, got his law degree from Cornell. As an assistant U.S. attorney in New York, Pierce helped bring the indictment against Rep. (1944-70) Adam Clayton Powell (D.-N.Y.) on charges of income tax evasion in a nationally watched trial. Powell survived–in large part because his lawyer Edward Bennett Williams convinced jurors that the IRS had never given the Harlem Democrat the opportunity provided most taxpayers to first explain his return (Powell had deducted his liquor and clothing bills).
Pierce went on to serve in the U.S. Labor Department in the Eisenhower Administration and as counsel to the antitrust subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller (R.) named him a judge of the Court of General Sessions in 1959-60, and President Nixon appointed Pierce general counsel to the U.S. Treasury Department (1970-73). Pierce also served as Martin Luther King, Jr.’s lawyer in the landmark Supreme Court libel case New York Times v. Sullivan and remained a close friend of Coretta Scott King and her family, despite his GOP ties. Prior to joining the Reagan Administration, Pierce was a partner in the law firm of Battle, Fowler, Jaffin, Pierce & Kheel–making him the first black partner in a major New York firm.
He was 78.