Push Pollers are Reaching Out to Touch Someone

Last night, I received a phone call from a pollster. She was a very pleasant woman (located in Birmingham, AL) with a fairly ugly job. She was a "push poller".

The 'survey' began innocently enough with a couple of questions about Isaac (name mispronounced) vs. Newberry, and whether a candidate’s political party was important to me when I voted. The pollster asked me what I thought of Scott Crosbie (not printable, after watching him switch parties and personal values with the political winds since his time in UK's SGA) and Ernie Fletcher (not printable on general principle).

After this, the questions quickly shifted their focus to the 7th City Council District.

I was presented with a number of statements and asked if they would make me more or less likely to vote for KC Crosbie or Justin Dobbs.

The statements touted KC's desire to build new schools (everyone promises this), making developers pay for the new roads and services their new snout-housed subdivisions needed (when pigs fly), her being a crime victim and thus wanting to hire more cops (everyone promises this, too, regardless of whether they've been victimized or not), and being endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police.

Justin Dobbs was referred to as young and inexperienced (guess being married to a city councilman counts as experience), and responsible for raising city taxes (he was a leader in the campaign to get LexTran more funding, something that the voters decided on).

The next group of statements referred to the raised taxes for LexTran and avowed that the new funding had made no difference to the citizens. Another statement: taking over the water company was costly and pernicious, since the only way the city could do it was by condemning the property via eminent domain.

KC Crosbie is against taking over the water company, by the way. Guess RWE will be making a contribution to her campaign, just like they did for half our sitting council.

I corrected this nice lady on a number of things, most notably the LexTran tax (I park at the transit center and have seen the difference). Of all the things I pay taxes for, public transportation is something I would want my money going to.

I also told her that RWE is selling their interest in Lexington water, but they refuse to sell it back to the city of Lexington (i.e. condemnation may not be the only option). She was really impressed with how much I knew about local politics.

To be fair, though, at least there were no personal smears aimed at Justin Dobbs. I've been exposed to a lot worse in other polls favoring candidates (Alice Forgy Kerr comes to mind).

Sarah G (i.e. not Gwen, oh trolls)