Hartford Courant: Guess Who's On The Line?

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Hartford Courant: Guess Who's On The Line?

The Hartford Courant July 26, 2006

By Christopher Keating

A Branford man picked up his telephone Monday night to find a political pollster on the other end.

The conversation started innocently as the caller asked whether the state was going in the right direction and how he felt about the races for governor and the U.S. Senate. But as soon as the Branford man said he was voting for New Haven Mayor John DeStefano instead of Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, the conversation abruptly turned to a series of anti-DeStefano questions.

What the pollster did not know was that the Branford man was Sam Gejdenson, the former U.S. House member who has publicly endorsed DeStefano.

"There was a lot of noise in the background, so it was a big phone-bank operation," said Gejdenson, a Democrat who served in Congress for 20 years before losing to Republican Rob Simmons in 2000. "It was definitely just a push poll to beat up the other guy. They said New Haven was dangerous. I've never felt endangered in New Haven."

"If Sam Gejdenson thinks he got a push poll, it certainly wasn't from the Malloy campaign or anyone we consider supporters," responded Chris Cooney, campaign manager for Malloy.

Although the Malloy campaign has been conducting research polling for the past two years, Cooney said, "We have never done push-polling, ever. "

Push-polling is a campaign practice in which candidates spread disinformation and sometimes outright lies about each other in the guise of an opinion survey. The line between that and the more accepted practice of research polling, in which candidates try to determine what messages might work best against their opponents, can be thin.

Cooney said Malloy supporters have received anti-Malloy telephone calls recently, but he said he was not making the assumption that the calls were generated by the DeStefano campaign. DeStefano's spokesman, Derek Slap, denied that the campaign had made any anti-Malloy calls.

"They need to come clean," Slap said. "We'd expect this from [President Bush's political adviser] Karl Rove, but not from Dan Malloy. Are they calling Sam Gejdenson a liar?"

The two campaigns are locked in a pitched battle that will culminate in the Aug. 8 primary. The latest poll by Quinnipiac University says that DeStefano is ahead by 20 percentage points among likely Democratic voters with 14 percent undecided.

"Our [internal polling] numbers and the Quinnipiac numbers are almost exactly the same," said Lt. Gov. Kevin B. Sullivan, who is supporting DeStefano.

Cooney said the Quinnipiac poll also showed that more than half of the respondents said they might change their minds before primary day.