Tales of a Push Pollster

Page 2 of 2

TOOLS E-mail article Print article BACKTALK E-mail the editor

But this time, FreeEats may have bitten off more than it can chew. The company, along with the Economic Freedom Fund, is now battling a lawsuit from the Indiana Attorney General's Office, charging that they broke the law in a "survey" in the 9th Congressional District, where former Democratic congressman Baron Hill is fighting to retake his old seat from Republican Mike Sodrel. According to court documents, FreeEats' robo-calls told voters that the Democrat "voted to allow the sale of a broad range of violent and sexually explicit materials to minors." Each call wound up with the question, "Does knowing this make you less likely to vote for Baron Hill?"

The allegation appears to refer to Hill's 1999 vote against a measure introduced by congressman Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) that was so radical, critics said it could have prohibited children from reading anything from the Bible to the morning newspaper. But it wasn't the content of the calls that caused the attorney general to take notice: The robo-calling software itself, the AG argued, violated a state statute prohibiting automated calls to Indiana residents. (North Dakota once fined FreeEats $20,000 for violating a similar statute.) Anticipating that campaigns might turn to such technology, Indiana's attorney general, Stephen Carter, had specifically alerted state party leaders to the prohibition in late August; in mid-September, after receiving 12 consumer complaints, Carter filed suit against the Economic Freedom Fund as well as American Family Voices, a left-leaning organization that was placing automated calls critical of Hill's opponent. FreeEats, which had originally been named as "John Doe 1" in Carter's complaint, then countersued, arguing that federal law and FCC regulations trump Indiana's statute.

Joseph, who says FreeEats has spent a considerable amount of money on legal expenses in general, says it's a First Amendment issue. "There's no more effective free speech tool than what we do," he told me. "That's why people complain. Because we're effective. If it wasn't effective, nobody would say anything." On October 24, U.S. District Judge Larry McKinney ruled against FreeEats, upholding Indiana's right to enforce its statute. "Contrary to FreeEats' suggestion, the harm is more than the simple ringing of the telephone," McKinney wrote in the ruling. "A call recipient cannot interrupt a prerecorded message and request not to be contacted, and if the individual does not answer the telephone or hangs up he or she runs the risk of additional calls in the future." Joseph says his lawyers are reviewing the decision.

But the Indiana ruling won't stop Joseph from operating in other states, and with about two weeks to go in the campaign, some political observers believe that firms like FreeEats are just warming up. "That's what's coming—the short-term stuff where you don't have the chance to respond," says Johnson of the Commonweal Institute. "I don't even think we've seen the Republican campaign start yet." Christopher Lee, a former Hill staffer who is the director of government relations for the Council for Marketing and Opinion Research, says that there is typically a spike in push polling efforts in the weeks before an election. "You're going to start seeing a lot more phone calls to the people who are in the haven't-made-my-decision category."

Push polls are also a favorite tool in the get-out-the-vote stage of campaigning—and an investigation of a state GOP official by Alaska's attorney general in 2003 revealed another glimpse of the company's playbook. "If they support our candidate, the candidate comes on with a 20-second GOTV thanking them for their vote and asking them to get their friends and family to vote as well," Joseph wrote in an email to Alaska Republican Party chairman Randy Ruedrich, according to the Anchorage Daily News. "If they support the opponent, we deliver a voter suppression message." (Joseph told me he didn't recall this exchange and denied that he would ever use the phrase "voter suppression." He said he was unaware of the Daily News article, though he is quoted in it.) According to the story, FreeEats' services were recommended to party leaders in Alaska by a former state Assemblyman, who, in turn, learned of the firm from "someone at the White House."

When I asked Joseph about the various allegations lodged against his firm over the years, he responded that what's been said or written about FreeEats doesn't matter in the end—what counts is impact. "When you make 3 ½ million phone calls a day, we generally talk to more people than watch television, listen to the radio, or read the newspaper combined." He paused, then added quietly, "If someone writes something that I don't like, I can make their life—I can make them understand a few things if I choose."

Listen to some robo calls:
Economic Freedom Fund survey in Indiana, recorded by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania (Stream | Download)
California Survey, posted by ccAdvertising (Stream | Download)
Grover Norquist survey in Iowa, posted by ccAdvertising (Stream | Download)

Previous Page

Daniel Schulman is an Investigative Fellow at Mother Jones.

Comments: