Progress Illinois

The Southtown Star's Kristen McQueary has done some solid reporting on Marty Ozinga's congressional campaign, including her column picking apart the Republican's comments downplaying America's health care crisis. In yesterday's paper, she had another great catch: the Ozinga camp is running push polls.

McQueary recalls how Frankfort resident Bruce Monstovich received an innocent sounding call from a pollster recently. After a few standard questions -- what were his feelings on President Bush, had he heard of Ozinga and Democratic rival Debbie Halvorson -- things got a bit fishy:

The so-called pollster then asked if Monstovich's opinion of Halvorson would change if he heard a statement from her indicating she supported gays and lesbians getting married or that she supported "giving illegal aliens Social Security benefits," Monstovich said.

"Of course I said if I heard something like that, I would be unfavorable," he said. "But then I asked the guy, 'Are these statements true?' He said he couldn't vouch for whether they were true or not."

McQueary explains why push polls are a different animal than traditional forms of campaign advertising:

They are clandestine. With mailers, radio and television advertisements, campaigns are required to include a small notation or message indicating who paid for the material. At least you know the messenger.

The plan may have backfired, too. Monstovich, an independent union carpenter, says if Ozinga sanctioned the calls, he's lost one vote:

"People are busy and getting these calls and making decisions based on being deceived. My opinion is anyone using these types of practices to get elected obviously can't get elected legitimately."

The news of Ozinga's push poll comes two weeks after we reported on the robocall he put out attacking Halvorson.  The call hit district residents at the same time that Halvorson was visiting her stepson at Walter Reed Hospital after he was seriously injured while serving in Afghanistan.  Both local and national veterans criticized the campaign's timing.

UPDATE: Reader TB points out that technically this type of phone survey shouldn't be described as a "push poll":

That was a message testing poll, very different from a "push poll."

A push poll calls every single voter with a misleading question pretending to be a regular poll. 

What that guy caught was a real poll.  Calling some statistically significant number (at least 400 for a congressional race) of voters with positive and negative questions designed to simulate what happens when voters hear arguments on behalf of candidates.

If a push is happening, you don't get a few complaints, you get thousands. 

One problem is we don't know how many 11th District voters received this call.  But as TB notes, if it were a bonafide push poll there would probably be many more complaints reported by now.

Also, I would classify the illegal immigrants/Social Security question as misleading.  This was a common line of attack in the 2006 midterm elections. Here's FactCheck.org's pushback:

[N]obody's proposing paying benefits to illegals, not until and unless they become US citizens or are granted legal status.