I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
It feels like a long time since we have had any news about Val Kilmer and his potential gubernatorial run — but now we have word of a suspicious poll.
The poll was first noted by blogger Joe Monahan, but Santa Fe New Mexican reporter Steve Terrell dug a bit deeper and found someone who had participated in the poll, which also mentioned Lt. Gov. Diane Denish and New Mexico Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez.
The participant, Amanda Parker of Albuquerque, told Terrell that the questions “about Kilmer seemed harsher than those about Denish, who has made clear that she will seek the state’s highest office.”
But Denish’s political director told Terrell it was not their poll.
So what were the questions? Well, they polled some of Kilmer’s more controversial statements that appeared in magazine profiles in the past:
In 2003, Kilmer was quoted in Rolling Stone saying, “I live in the homicide capital of the Southwest. Eighty percent of the people in my county are drunk.”In 2005, Esquire quoted Kilmer saying he would do a better job than an actual veteran in portraying a Vietnam vet in a movie. “A guy who’s lived through the horror of Vietnam has not spent his life preparing his mind for it. He’s some punk. Most guys were borderline criminal or poor, and that’s why they got sent to Vietnam. It was all the poor, wretched kids who got beat up by their dads, guys who didn’t get on the football team, couldn’t finagle a scholarship.”
Both statements caused controversies. In both cases, Kilmer has said he was misquoted in the magazines.
The editor of Esquire has since come out and said the magazine has the conversations on tape and that Kilmer is accurately quoted.
The question is whether or not this is a push poll. Push polls, according to the National Council on Public Polling, “are political telemarketing.”
A “Push Poll” is a telemarketing technique in which telephone calls are used to canvass vast numbers of potential voters, feeding them false and damaging “information” about a candidate under the guise of taking a poll to see how this “information” affects voter preferences. In fact, the intent is to “push” the voters away from one candidate and toward the opposing candidate. This is clearly political telemarketing, using innuendo and, in many cases, clearly false information to influence voters; there is no intent to conduct research.
It is unknown how many people were contacted for this particular poll, and to be considered a push poll it would need to reach a significant number of people.
But once again, it looks like the Val Kilmer Watch is alive and well.
