Those
with a proven record of changing the status quo and
moving Virginia forward have a right to be furious
at a small clique of businessmen in the Hampton
Roads Partnership, along with Sen. Marty Williams
(R-Newport News), chairman of the Senate
Transportation Committee. Together, they engaged in
a cynical effort to manipulate the political system
through the use of a "cooked" public
opinion poll. Give them their due: They held
Tidewater politics hostage for the past year.
Yet this fascinating, true story doesn't seem to
interest Hampton Roads journalists.
This is very curious. For the past many months, the
editorial pages of the Daily Press and the Virginian-Pilot
engaged in the most sustained and unprecedented
"blame the customer" politics in my
political experience. They derided the IQ and the
local economic patriotism of eastern Virginia
residents, accusing them of selfishly refusing to
shoulder their fair share of responsibility for
dealing with the region's transportation needs.
I ask you: In what other legal endeavor could you
berate your customers as ignorant, selfish,
uninformed and cheap, but not worry about going out
of business?
The first amendment guarantees everyone the right to
express, ad nauseum if necessary, their political
opinion. But as I wrote
here on Aug. 22:
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Sadly
-- and this is what led to the research contained in
this article -- neither the Daily Press nor
the Virginian-Pilot apparently feels any
journalistic obligation to review their crucial role
in this cynical manipulation. Their "news"
stories on Nov. 29, 2001 were critical to what
transpired.
When you compare the content of these stories --
based purely on the self-serving claims of privately
funded interests -- with what has now been proven in
the public arena, one does not have to be Edward R.
Murrow on his legendary show "See It Now"
to realize that the journalism tradition expects,
and the people deserve, a public accounting.
I hope what follows will start the process.
It
all started, ironically enough, on Nov. 14, the
141st birthday of Claude Monet. While local
newspapers were celebrating the work of the great
French impressionist, certain members of the Hampton
Roads Partnership, a public-private alliance between
businessmen and politicians, were creating some
impressions themselves -- false impressions. They
hired the respected Republican polling firm of
McLaughlin and Associates to do a "poll"
of Hampton Roads voters on the transportation issue.
According to the Pilot, the interviewing took
place on Nov. 14th, 2001.
The Hampton Roads Partnership "poll" was
unlike any other, before or since, on the
transportation issue in the Hampton Roads area.
Indeed, less than a month before, the Virginian
Pilot had published a poll taken for it by
another polling firm that showed an entirely
different picture on a tax referendum in Northern
Virginia, which at the time was considered far more
supportive of such measures than Tidewater [and
indeed, NOVA's tax referendum ran much stronger than
the doomed Tidewater Tax earlier this month,
although both lost].
The Hampton Roads Partnership poll could not have
appeared at a more politically convenient time.
Three weeks previously, on Oct. 20, the Warner
campaign had made news in the Daily Press by
saying the candidate would sign a transportation tax
referendum for Hampton Roads, not just Northern
Virginia, the major referendum battleground. But
candidate Warner had made it clear he would not
force a referendum on any region. Indeed, the Daily
Press later had a story in January tweaking Gov.
Warner for his hands-off position. Then on Nov. 6,
Virginians had elected Mark Warner as governor. Many
in the press attributed this victory to his support
for regional transportation tax referendums in those
areas that wanted them.
Then, presto, a month before the General Assembly
convened and took up the issue, the Hampton Roads Partnership gave the
local news media its "poll results"
demonstrating support for higher taxes. In turn, the
media put them in newspaper with much fanfare,
giving the "results" legitimacy and
massive publicity without any real effort to check
the accuracy, despite the private interest of the
source, in this case the Partnership, even though,
as indicated above, their own polling date from the
month before made these "results" suspect.
The stories appeared on Nov. 29th, with the headline
in the Daily Press beginning, "Poll:
Traffic is Area Top Woe ...." According to the Pilot,
the poll found that residents in Hampton Roads were
three times more likely to pick
"transportation" as the "leading
problem facing the region" over education. The
opening line in the front-page Virginian-Pilot
story declared that "[N]early 70 percent of
Hampton Roads residents polled in a new survey back
the idea of a regional tax to pay for key local road
and transit projects."
Never has a turkey of a "poll" contributed
more to a Happy Thanksgiving than during November of
2001. This image of overwhelming public concern with
transportation fit perfectly with the impression
that Warner's advocacy of regional referendums won
him the election.
Suddenly, Hampton Roads residents were THREE TIMES
more likely to list transportation as their leading
issue as opposed to education. This was key data
point that showed the "poll" to be
grievously flawed. How so? Other polls taken during
the 2001 election cycle, to the knowledge of this
author, never showed anything of this nature. Education
was the top concern of Hampton Roads voters, not
transportation. So, this polling
"internal" number, as it is called in the
business, was very telling.
I do not mean to suggest the numbers reported were
in any way fabricated. But the questionnaire and
methodology used to develop and then take the
"poll" skewed the outcome in favor of the
people paying for it.
Pollsters can bias the results, consciously or
unconsciously, by the way they construct the
questions and in what order they ask them. For
example, if they construct a "poll" in a
way that asks leading questions about a certain
subject -- transportation -- to the exclusion of
others, it can greatly skew the respondents'
responses on subsequent questions such as, what is
the top issue for consideration and would you pay
higher taxes to solve it.
It is always a problem in polling to avoid biasing
the responses by providing information and
constructing questions in the "run-up" to
the key questions you are actually testing.
Given the "results" and what was known
about the political landscape at the time -- and
what is known now -- surely the observations in this
article should raise questions as why the Pilot
and Daily Press failed their duty.
But such fine points of polling methodology didn't
matter early in the year. Sen. Williams and the
Hampton Roads Partnership had what they wanted: a
gun to the head of the local political process.
As Senate Transportation Committee chairman,
Williams also had great sway over the fate of the
Northern Virginia transportation referendum
proposal. It wasn't long before the news stories in
Tidewater were reporting that Del. John A. Rollison,
R-Woodbridge, who was worried about the passage of
the NOVA transportation referendum he'd sponsored,
was saying publicly how this new support for a
Tidewater referendum proposal helped his cause.
By Feb. 27, the Hampton Roads Referendum had already
passed both the House and the Senate, without
needing any prodding from the Governor, as reported
in the media. At which point, the politics had
passed the fail-safe point.
Once Williams and the Hampton Road Partnership got
the referendum on the ballot, they set in motion an
inevitable falling of the dominoes.
Logic suggests they figured they were no worse off
by pushing the referendum even if it lost big; they
would be in no worse position, given their view of
the desperation of the transportation situation
without higher taxes. But of course, they had a poll
saying they could win big.
There
is an important line between forceful advocacy and
manipulative irresponsibility. Taking the
"results" of such a poll, and then using
it to give a false impression on such an emotional
political issue, crosses that line in my judgment.
The greatest danger to any democratic process is a
rampant, reinforcing cynicism among the public.
Cynicism, far more than bad judgment, is the true
enemy of progress, for it makes people believe all
the politicians are the same. What happened in
Tidewater is now clear. Some very powerful local
forces used their position to take advantage of the
system.
The Tidewater news media did not bother to do their
due diligence, but rather allowed themselves to be
used to promote this false impression. Given the
overwhelming support they gave the tax referendum,
journalistic tradition says they now owe the public
an accounting and an explanation.
Based on these facts, many of the contributors who
gave those several million to the YES campaign might
rightly believe they were fleeced out of their
money.
I teach my son the end does not justify the means.
This is an important lesson in life. We are all
never too old to learn it.
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November 20, 2002
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