Joanie Griffin Campaign Admits Negative "Push Polling" in ABQ District 6 City Council Race

Below is a release from the Rey Garduño campaign reporting on negative telephone "push polling" that the Joanie Griffin campaign has allegedly admitted it is behind. When the Garduño campaign learned of the calls, they got voters in District 6 to record info from them and passed it on to Dan McKay of the Albuquerque Journal. According to Garduño, McKay followed up and Griffin (above right) eventually admitted she had paid for the anonymous push polling.

Those familiar with Albuquerque politics may remember that similar push polling was done against Martin Heinrich and Debbie O'Malley four years ago. Funny how push polling and other negative campaign tactics often get employed against candidates who are not to Mayor Marty Chavez's liking, isn't it? No proof. Just saying.

From Rey Garduño for City Council:
ALBUQUERQUE (Wednesday, September 26, 2007). Starting early this morning voters in City Council District 6 received an anonymous "push poll”-- or calls that pretended to be a poll but whose purpose was to include negative information about Rey Garduño. Push polling is universally denounced as an unethical campaign tactic.

In violation of the city’s ethics code, the calls were anonymous and when voters pressed the caller to disclose who was paying for the calls, the caller either hung up or said they could not disclose that information. Later it was revealed that candidate Joanie Griffin paid to have the calls made.

On the afternoon of Wednesday, September 26, the Albuquerque Journal asked Griffin if she was behind the anonymous push poll, which she admitted she was. As late as 7:30 PM, Griffin did not change the phone script to include a disclosure nor did she stop the calls from being made.

"Push polls are universally denounced as unethical campaign tactics. They mislead the public to think they are participating in a legitimate poll when are in fact the purpose is only to malign candidates. I am disappointed that she stooped to this level," said Rey Garduño.

"The fact that she did unethical push polls was bad enough. Even though she admitted to the wrong doing she still allowed the calls to continue in violation of the city’s ethics code. At a minimum, Griffin should apologize to the voters in District 6 for engaging in unethical dirty campaigning," said Rey Garduño.

Albuquerque's municipal election is set for October 2nd, 2007. Both mail-in (absentee) and in-person early voting is going on right now. To read our previous posts on the city election, visit our archive. You might also want to see a previous post about other rather shady practices used by the Griffin campaign.