Jonathan Martin has his updates here but it appears we’re the only one with a major source

I’ve communicated to my source at Western Wats on numerous occasions now. (see here and here )

He is a senior executive at the company. He is very tight lipped about the whole thing but notes the following:

• The call could have been made at anyone of their locations (they have call centers in Utah, Idaho, Nebraska, Kansas)
• They employ over 1500 people across the country and have dozens of projects happening at any given moment
• They claim that they do not do push polling… rather their focus has been message testing. They do this for political campaigns and Fortune 500 companies to gauge the reaction to certain facts and pieces of information.
• They don’t write the scripts. They don’t analyze the data. They have no stake in the end results.
• In many cases they have no idea who the end client is. (this way they don’t taint the data one way or the other)
• He indicated that he would love nothing more than a political entity to force their hand on this and reveal the client. But his hands are tied.
• He believes that if the script is ever made available that the reaction will be “Is this all? that’s not a big deal.”

UPDATE: Just spoke to my Western Wats source (a senior employee at the firm).

• He said the notion that this is Romney-driven is “nonsense” and “ridiculous”.
• He did not confirm or deny that the calls came from his firm.
• His company employs 1500 people with centers is Idaho, Nebraska, Utah, and numerous other states.
• He also indicated that this is being blown way out of proportion. He thinks if the details came out people would scratch their heads wondering what the big deal was.

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OK. So, let's review the last 24 hours:

• Jonathan Martin of Politico and others get wind of research calls going out to Iowa and New Hampshire voters inserting some anti-Mormon rhetoric along the way.
• Philip Elliot of the AP runs with the story and points to Utah firm Western Wats as the calling center source for the alleged phone survey.
• Hugh Hewitt notes that whoever the campaign is behind this effort will catch some serious flack.
• Other blogs start to catch on and Martin updates his post to note that Rudy's research team have used Western Wats in the past
• McCain denies it. Rudy follow suit.
  
• Questions begin to surface as to why an opposition candidate would risk such a venture and why they would use a Utah firm to do so
• Romney calls the efforts "un-american" and points to Mcain Feingold as one of culprits
• The NH Attorney General says he will investigate.
  
• Liz Mair, David Freddoso and others start poking around and find out that there are numerous donors to Romney's campaign who work at Western Wats.
• I contact some sources and finally get in touch with a senior employee at Western Wats willing to talk anonymously about some details.
• Soren Dayton takes the conspiracy implications further by noting that the founder of Western Wats has ties to Romney.
• Hewitt calls the bluff on those touting Romney did it theories and they back off a bit

That's where we are. In short,

I was browsing the speech Giuliani was privileged (courtesy of Ted Olsen) to give to the Federalist Society. I am proud to be a member of the society. I have gone to many student and attorney events and I have generally found there are two types of Federalists. There are libertarian and there are conservative Federalists.

Interestingly enough, I found that I disagreed sometime more with libertarian Federalists than I did with some right leaning democrats. Why? Because while I thought it perfectly acceptable to pass laws through democratic processes related to social conservative issues, the libertarian members often opposed such laws. For example, while we might both agree that Roe v. Wade should be overturned as bad precedent, the libertarian was likely to oppose a state heavily restricting abortion (I realize there are libertarians who feel differently). Another example is the war on drugs. Generally, I found libertarian Federalists to oppose any drug laws where I supported them.

If Rudy Giuliani is a Federalist, he is surely a libertarian one, at best. Which is why when I was reading his speech, I wondered aloud how anyone could swallow one of the central claims of Rudy Giuliani's candidacy, that he can be trusted to appoint "conservative judges." Yes, that phrase "conservative judges" actually appears in the speech. But realize as well that Rudy has never clearly applied that label to himself.

So, I asked my search engine the magic question: "Rudy Giulaini history judges appointing." The first hit was a Politico article about Rudy's experience appointing judges in New York. Now, some people might say this is a different matter, but I think the article makes a good point of why all judicial appointments have consequences. Have a read, I think it is enlightening. And really, a bit of a shock to think that the promise to appoint a certain type of judge could possibly hold up a two legged stool.

Romney posted another strong Poll from Rasmussen Reports today from Iowa.

Romney 29%
Huckabee 16%
Giuliani 15%
Thompson 14%
John McCain 6%
Ron Paul 4%
Tom Tancredo 4%

When the three battling for second lose, I will find it funny when the one who loses the least claims victory. In my line of work, when the other side comes in second, someone goes to prison.

I just spoke at length with a senior Western Wats employee about the situation.

I told him that there are numerous reports now on both sides of the battle. One claiming that opposing campaigns are behind these efforts another pointing to Western Wats employees contributing to Mitt and claiming this is an inside job to make Mitt's opponents look bad.

First, he wanted to impress upon me that Western Wats does not do push polling, rather they do message testing. (I think this distinction will be lost on most people.)

Here are the key takeaways from the interview:

• Western Wats does not write these scripts
• They do not analyze the data
• They don't know the outcome of the analysis
• Many times they don't know the end client at all

I asked him about the NH AG looking into the matter. He said, he hoped they would it would save him a lot of headaches. The short of it is this (IMHO): we won't get any answers until there's a official investigation to pry it out of the NDA-clenched hands.

Here are some near verbatim quotes:

"I have to act like any business. I am under NDA to all of our clients. If I violate this there are serious consequences."

"Believe me. There are 100 conversations I wish I could have in depth with people today."

"The primary thing we do here is conduct and survey research data via telephone and internet surveys. We don't write or design or analyze the results. We simply collect the data."

"Like any industry, the research market is highly specialized. We specialize in making the calls and the technology that goes on behind it"

"First thing to note, we are not the author of the work, we don't have a primary interest in how that data is used. Its used on Fortune 500 companies across the world and in political campaigns as well. When we do any kind of a survey we don't have a direct interest in the outcome."

"As to the donations. Its a pretty big company by our market standard. I wouldn't be surprised if other people had given to other candidates"

"You should also understand that if you went to any political polling strategist the candidate message is tested as part of that process. Good or bad or indifferent. They use it to sculpt messages, speeches and media."

"People don't understand that this is very different from push polling"

"As a company we often don't know who the client is."

He sent me a press release:

It has come to the attention of Western Wats that several stories in the press are circulating claiming Western Wats engages in a practice commonly referred to as “push polling.”

Western Wats has never, currently does not, nor will it ever engage in push polling.

Often we find there is confusion on the question of what is legitimate opinion survey research and what is commonly referred to as push polling. American Association of Public Opinion Researcher (AAPOR), has good definitional information on push polling
http://aapor.org/aaporstatementonpushpolls. Additionally, interested individuals may find an article which appeared in the Rothenberg Political Report on this topic to be of interest.

Western Wats is a survey research data collection firm which services the opinion survey research and marketing research industries. Western Wats does not design or determine the content of the surveys it operationalizes by telephone or over the Internet, nor does it analyze or use the data for its own purposes. Confidentiality agreements prohibit us from commenting on specific projects and/or clients.
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With the latest about the anti-Mormon calls going around, several people have weighed in on what Romney's reaction should be. First, the Editors at NRO have some thoughts:

Nor should Romney denounce anti-Mormon bigotry. Accusing people who are so far withholding their votes of bigotry is not likely to persuade them to change their minds. Few people who oppose Romney because he is a Mormon are going to come around. Romney’s problem, and his opportunity, is a different group of people: those who are not hostile to Mormons but find Mormonism unfamiliar and strange.

They further suggest that Romney should give a speech, not like JFK's, but one saying that the unfamiliar and strange parts of Mormonism have no bearing on his ability to govern and that he still shares similar values.

I find it almost unbelievable that they suggest that Romney not denounce anti-Mormon bigotry. It's not that the people are withholding their vote that offends, as the editors suggest. It's the offensive and false slanders directed at Romney and his religious affiliation that warrant denouncement. Romney would find no occasion nor cause to decry a lack of votes due to hostility to Mormonism. Neither has Romney attempted to revile large segments of the electorate for apprehension towards him because of his faith. However, specific acts of ugly anti-Mormonism should be condemned clearly and unequivocally

In response to the Editors, Lisa Schiffren (at the Corner) says that Romney should go further than the Editors suggest:

It is not easy to spell out one's own religious views and how they compare and contrast to the standard doctrine of that religion in a speech. We voters are best off observing, over time — as the nation has done with, say, Senator Lieberman, whose very moderate Orthodoxy has made it easy for him to get along with both conservative Christians and less religious voters. But Romney is a serious possibility in this cycle. So, I personally think that letting us know more about his religious beliefs would be useful. Especially now that the anti-Mormon push polling has begun in New Hampshire and Iowa.

So the question is: Does the recent manifestation of anti-Mormonism directed at Romney merit Romney's deliverance of some sort of religious address? In my opinion, the answer is still no. An a-religious media is incompetent in religious matters. Thus, Romney's message would be placed in the hands of an unreliable messenger. Nor would the media be satisfied that Romney has laid the issue to rest, continuously second-guessing the effect of the speech or speculating about the reason(s?) that Romney excluded certain doctrines and included others.

Schiffren acknowledges as much, understanding that behavior teaches us more than any speech can. The goal, then, should be to inquire about Romney's past in order to learn about the man and his beliefs. Indeed this is what Paul Weyrich describes in an Op/Ed in the Washington Times convinced him to endorse Romney:

The issue here is simply this: Is Mr. Romney competent to be president of this great country? Indeed he is. Mr. Romney has the experience, vision and values to be president. He has spent most of his career in the private sector turning around companies and the 2002 Winter Olympics. He has actually met payrolls. How many of the other candidates running can match that? And, he successfully ran a very liberal state for four years by governing as a conservative.

And while I very much disagree with the theology of the Mormon Church, its principles have given him the ethical standards needed for an American president. Can anyone point to scandals connected with the governor?

Update 2: I just spoke to the firm in question. They indicated that they do not do push polling. Rather they focus on "message testing". Whatever. They did not dent or confirm that they were the source of the calls in question. They are preparing a statement.


UPDATE: Some reports indicate that McCain is the culprit. McCain disputes this in a statement. Politico points the finger at Rudy but then recinds. News vans are outside the UTAH-based polling firm! What is going on!

Numerous sources are now reporting anti-Mormon push-polls running in New Hampshire and Iowa. Apparently, the call starts out ok and then delves into some nasty rhetoric:

Among the questions was whether a resident knew that Romney was a Mormon, that he received military deferments when he served as a Mormon missionary in France, that his five sons did not serve in the military, that Romney's faith did not accept blacks as bishops into the 1970s and that Mormons believe the Book of Mormon is superior to the Bible.

...

"The first 15 or 20 questions were general questions about the leading candidates," she said. "Then he started asking me very, very negatively phrased questions about Romney. The first one was would you have a more favorable, less favorable, blah, blah, blah, impression of Mitt Romney if you knew that his five sons had never served in the military and that he considered working on a presidential campaign as public service or some such question."

Hugh Hewitt says: If the campaign that used appeals to religious bigotry is identified, it will be over for that candidate.

This is ugly folks.

Jeff Fuller

We've spoken on numerous occasions about the unique innovations that Romney has used to drive his campaign forward. Tonight, I spoke at the Leadership Institute's Internet Fundraising Forum... when I get back to my email I see that the Romney campaign has redefined fundraising once again.

One of the fundamental principles of fundraising is trust. How do I know (as a contributor) that you're going to use the money I give you in the right way. Well... now you know.

Introducing the Victory Fund. The Romney camp gives you the ability to buy an actual ad in a local early state market. (see graphic below)

Just like you buy a brick to build your local library. Now you can buy a brick in the Romney media machine as he drives toward victory!

Try it out!

Contribute $175 to buy a 30-second TV ad in Charleston, South Carolina.

Contribute $300 to buy a 30-second TV ad in Florence, South Carolina

Contribute $425 to buy a 30-second TV ad in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Contribute $800 to buy a 30-second TV ad in Des Moines, Iowa.

Contribute $1,275 to buy a 30-second TV ad in Manchester, New Hampshire

Labels: ads, fundraising, fundraising team mitt, iowa, online fundraising, south carolina, tv

...Marc Ambinder says that Huck takes a swing and whiffs:

To the roar of the crowd, ex-AR Gov. Mike Huckabee stepped up to the plate yesterday. A fast ball. Swing and a miss. Strike one.

Huckabee was asked to respond to the unflattering video of him "begging," in the words of the Romney campaign, the state legislature to raise taxes in 2003.

On Fox News, Huckabee said that he was following the will of the state Supreme Court, who had ordered the state government to pay more for education.

But the video clip in question showed Huckabee referring to a regular budget plan and had nothing to do with the state supreme court decision.

So -- about half of Huckabee's press coverage was positive -- Huckmentum -- and half of it was negative -- particularly the Fox News-Drudge-conservative blog half.

This wasn't an underhand pitch -- it wasn't a question about his weight loss, his guitar or his sense of humor -- it was about an issue that has the potential to trip him up.

Welcome to the big show.

Labels: mike huckabee