Results tagged “pushpoll”

Mayor Bloomberg rolled out his first television commercials of his campaign today, almost six weeks prior to when he hit the airwaves in his 2005 run. With the $3 million he's pouring into the ads, that run in both English and Spanish on major networks over the next two weeks, Bloomberg will be spending half of his competitors' total individual budgets for the primary season since they are accepting public financing. The Times says that Bloomberg's could be "the biggest and most expensive political advertising campaign in the city’s history."

Mayor Bloomberg may be enjoying a comfortable lead in the polls, but that $80 million he plans to drop on his re-election campaign isn't going to spend itself. As Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause, tells the Times, "If you have too much money in your campaign, you don’t use it productively. He’s hired so many consultants who are looking for something to do." Like annoy New Yorkers with a telephone survey spreading innuendo about likely Democratic rival Anthony Weiner! The practice, known as "push-polling," is described by one of Weiner's advisers as, "one of the most discredited and dishonorable forms of negative campaigning."