[Vision2020] Organization Says Anti-Minnick Ad Misused Its Survey

[Tom Hansen]

>From Friday's (October 24, 2008) Spokesman Review -

---------------------------------------------------------

Organization says anti-Minnick ad misused its survey 

Betsy Z. Russell 
Staff writer
October 24, 2008

BOISE – A new campaign commercial targeting Idaho Democratic congressional 
candidate Walt Minnick has angered a nonpartisan organization that says 
its candidate survey is misused in the ad.

"That's pretty flagrant," Adelaide Elm, a board member of Project 
VoteSmart, said of the National Republican Congressional Committee's new 
anti-Minnick ad.

The ad claims that Minnick "supported higher income taxes across the 
board," citing the 1996 candidate survey that Project VoteSmart published 
when Minnick was running for the U.S. Senate and also citing 1996 and 2007 
federal tax tables.

But in the 1996 survey, Minnick was asked to "indicate the changes you 
support, if any, concerning the tax levels for the following categories." 
For all income categories, Minnick selected the no-change 
option, "maintain status."

Brendan Buck, spokesman for the NRCC, noted that tax rates were higher in 
1996 than they are now, since the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. "All 
taxes at the time were higher than they are today," he said. Thus, he 
said, Minnick was supporting higher taxes.

John Foster, spokesman for Minnick's campaign, called that "tortured 
logic," and said Minnick favors tax cuts for the middle class. The ad's 
claim is "not accurate," he said.

Brandon Horton, press secretary for Project VoteSmart, pointed to clear, 
bold-faced warnings on the group's Web site that its surveys aren't to be 
used "in any campaign activity, including advertising, debates and 
speeches."

"Unfortunately we can't copyright all the information that's given to us," 
he said. "We try to make it clear as possible that information provided to 
our site is not to be used for any political means … especially in attack 
ads, because quite frequently it's used improperly."

He added, "If people want to see how a person responded to our test, they 
should go to our site. It's this kind of negative politics that we're 
directly opposed to."

Asked about Project VoteSmart's concerns, Buck said, "I think the most 
important thing is the voters see where people stand on the issues, and 
clearly Walter Minnick demonstrated that he believes taxes should be 
higher than they are now."

The NRCC's ad is running throughout the 1st Congressional District, 
including in the Spokane market. The group's Democratic counterpart, the 
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is running its own ad 
targeting incumbent GOP Rep. Bill Sali, showing him with a flock of sheep 
and suggesting he's "hanging with the wrong flock in Washington."

Minnick declined to respond to the Project VoteSmart survey this year, a 
move the group said is part of a trend.

"In 1996, we actually had 100 percent of congressional candidates in Idaho 
return the test," Horton said. "That's down to 44 percent this year. … 
Candidates are becoming less and less willing to expose their issue 
positions, and it is for such reasons as what he's run into – attacks."

Elm said the VoteSmart survey response rate among federal candidates 
has "fallen dramatically" across the nation. "That in part is because of 
this business about twisting their words and using them against them in 
attack ads," she said.

Foster said Minnick didn't complete the VoteSmart survey this year because 
of time constraints. "He answered dozens of surveys, and you only have 
time to do so many," Foster said. "We favored spending more time on local 
surveys."

Sali also declined to fill out the group's survey, dubbed the "Political 
Courage Test."

Foster said he found the NRCC's use of the survey "very distasteful," 
saying it's a "smear … based on this one thing that they have spun for 
their purposes, and it says explicitly that they are not allowed to use 
it, and they do it anyway. … I think people are tired of this kind of 
campaign."

---------------------------------------------------------

Seeya at Farmers' Market and the Homecoming Parade, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
UI '96
 
"We're a town of about 23,000 with 10,000 college students. The college 
students are not very active in local elections (thank goodness!)."

- Dale Courtney (March 28, 2007)


---------------------------------------------
This message was sent by First Step Internet.
           http://www.fsr.com/