Jim Ferrell falsely labels NPI’s Prosecuting Attorney contest research a “push poll”

Ear­li­er this month, here on The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, we pub­lished NPI’s first poll find­ing in the 2022 King Coun­ty Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney contest.

We found the two con­tenders for the job ini­tial­ly tied in the sin­gle dig­its, with Leesa Man­ion jump­ing out to a sig­nif­i­cant lead over her rival Jim Fer­rell after not sure vot­ers were asked a fol­low-up ques­tion that gave them infor­ma­tion about each can­di­date sourced from the biogra­phies on their cam­paign websites.

Asked about our find­ing dur­ing an appear­ance on Jason Rantz’s right wing talk show this week, Fer­rell inex­plic­a­bly went on the attack, false­ly denounc­ing NPI’s research as “a push poll” and declar­ing him­self the vic­tim of unfair prac­tices. Here’s a tran­script of that exchange between him and Rantz:

JASON RANTZ: We’re talk­ing with Jim Far­rell. He’s the Fed­er­al Way May­or. He’s also a can­di­date for King Coun­ty Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney. As we turn to that con­test, we saw a recent poll by the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute… not a great poll for either you or your oppo­nent Leesa Man­ion, at least ini­tial­ly. No one knows who they’re going to vote for… Eighty-three per­cent were like, I don’t know.

JIM FERRELL: So why open?

JASON RANTZ: Right. I mean, so then they asked a fol­low up ques­tion where they basi­cal­ly said, who do you sup­port, after you read this infor­ma­tion about who they are?

And I want to read what Leesa Man­ion wrote, because, after this, she comes out ahead of you. She said — or this is how they pre­scribe her cam­paign, or describe it:

Leesa Man­ion is the cur­rent Chief of Staff of the King Coun­ty Pros­e­cut­ing Attorney’s Office, where she has spear­head­ed projects aimed at pro­tect­ing pub­lic safe­ty, reduc­ing racial dis­pro­por­tion­al­i­ty, strength­en­ing vic­tim ser­vices, and hold­ing repeat per­pe­tra­tors accountable. 

By the way, this does not mean any of this is true. That last state­ment, we know, is not nec­es­sar­i­ly true.

She also over­sees a work­force of near­ly 600 employ­ees and an annu­al bud­get of $80 million.

So once they ask that ques­tion, forty-one per­cent of those who answered said they would sup­port her, which is about dou­ble what they said for you. What’s your response to that state­ment describ­ing Leesa Manion?

JIM FERRELL: Well, this is a clas­sic push poll, um, and it clear­ly does­n’t reflect, actu­al­ly, her actu­al expe­ri­ence. And the back­ground that they put for me, you know, real­ly was not… was not suf­fi­cient… was not ful­ly… it’s a clas­sic, what they call push poll.

JASON RANTZ: Yeah.

There’s an old adage in pol­i­tics that when you don’t like the result of some­thing, whether it be an endorse­ment vote, or, in this case, polling, you com­plain about the process. That seems to be what’s going on here with Ferrell.

We are not aligned with Leesa Man­ion’s cam­paign; we don’t endorse can­di­dates or engage in elec­tion­eer­ing for or against any can­di­date at NPI. Our elec­toral polling is inde­pen­dent, and it has a track record of being cor­re­lat­ed by actu­al elec­tion results. None of that mat­ters, appar­ent­ly, to Jim Ferrell.

Fer­rell start­ed out tied with Leesa Man­ion in our sum­mer Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney polling, but the “not sure” vot­ers end­ed up lik­ing Man­ion’s bio­graph­i­cal high­lights more than his in our fol­low-up ques­tion, prompt­ing him to go cry foul on right wing talk radio, and false­ly insin­u­ate — with Rantz agree­ing, nat­u­ral­ly — that the goal of our research was to harm his candidacy.

A push poll, for those read­ers not famil­iar with the term, is a “polit­i­cal dirty trick” in which neg­a­tive infor­ma­tion about a per­son or orga­ni­za­tion is cir­cu­lat­ed in the guise of a sur­vey ques­tion. The term has its own entry in Safire’s Polit­i­cal Dic­tio­nary, and we have cit­ed that def­i­n­i­tion in pre­sen­ta­tions explain­ing why Tim Eyman’s “advi­so­ry votes” are real­ly a form of pro­pa­gan­da. Here it is:

A push poll is a nefar­i­ous tele­mar­ket­ing tech­nique designed to spread neg­a­tive infor­ma­tion about an oppo­si­tion candidate.

Dur­ing the South Car­oli­na pri­ma­ry of 2000, a caller from the George W. Bush cam­paign asked 300 poten­tial voters:

John McCain calls the cam­paign finance sys­tem cor­rupt, but as chair­man of the Sen­ate Com­merce Com­mit­tee, he rais­es mon­ey and trav­els on the pri­vate jets of cor­po­ra­tions with leg­isla­tive pro­pos­als before his com­mit­tee. In view of this, are you much more like­ly to vote for him… or much more like­ly to vote against him?

A push poll is not a legit­i­mate pub­lic opin­ion sur­vey because its pur­pose is not to obtain an opin­ion but to influ­ence it, which qual­i­fies the device as a dirty trick.

— From the Dirty Tricks entry of Safire’s Polit­i­cal Dic­tio­nary, 2008 edi­tion (Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press | New York, New York)

In that excerpt above, you can see what a “clas­sic push poll” actu­al­ly looks like.  The ques­tion is obvi­ous­ly prej­u­di­cial and any answers to it would be irrel­e­vant. You can’t find out what peo­ple real­ly think when you ask a loaded question.

At NPI, we believe that bad inputs yield bad out­puts. If the ques­tion is bad, the answers will be worth­less. That’s why, in our research, we work extreme­ly hard to ask neu­tral ques­tions of rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ples. That is the key to cred­i­ble, accu­rate, trust­wor­thy pub­lic opin­ion research, espe­cial­ly elec­toral research.

For the King Coun­ty Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney con­test, we knew from our years of polling expe­ri­ence that a high num­ber of vot­ers were like­ly to answer that they were not sure when asked about their pref­er­ences in this race.

Accord­ing­ly, we devel­oped a fol­low-up ques­tion for not sure vot­ers which offered more infor­ma­tion. The infor­ma­tion we pro­vid­ed was sourced direct­ly from the About pages of Leesa Man­ion’s web­site and Jim Fer­rel­l’s website.

The text of our fol­low-up ques­tion was:

Here’s a short descrip­tion of the can­di­dates, excerpt­ed from the biogra­phies on their cam­paign websites.

Leesa Man­ion is the cur­rent Chief of Staff of the King Coun­ty Pros­e­cut­ing Attorney’s Office, where she has spear­head­ed projects aimed at pro­tect­ing pub­lic safe­ty, reduc­ing racial dis­pro­por­tion­al­i­ty, strength­en­ing vic­tim ser­vices, and hold­ing repeat per­pe­tra­tors account­able. She also over­sees a work­force of near­ly 600 employ­ees and an annu­al bud­get of $80 million.

Jim Fer­rell is the cur­rent May­or of Fed­er­al Way. He pre­vi­ous­ly served as a Fed­er­al Way City Coun­cilmem­ber and as a King Coun­ty Senior Deputy Pros­e­cu­tor, defend­ing vic­tims of crime and work­ing to keep our com­mu­ni­ty safe. Fer­rell began his career as a pros­e­cu­tor for the City of Ren­ton, Wash­ing­ton before mov­ing into the King Coun­ty Pros­e­cut­ing Attorney’s Office in 1998.

If you had to choose, who would you vote for?

You can see from the screen­shots below that the text was sourced from the can­di­dates’ cam­paign web­sites. Our team select­ed pas­sages to go in the poll, but we did­n’t gen­er­ate the descrip­tions. The word­ing came from the cam­paigns. It’s part of what they have put out into the pub­lic domain for vot­ers to read.

Aside from some light edit­ing, what respon­dents saw was a por­tion of how Man­ion and Fer­rell describe them­selves. Notice that no neg­a­tive state­ments were pro­vid­ed to respon­dents about either can­di­date. The excerpts shown were about of equal length. The goal was to ask a neu­tral question.

When we pub­lished these results, I made it absolute­ly clear where the infor­ma­tion shown to not sure respon­dents came from. I explained:

Since the voter’s pam­phlet state­ment for the Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion has not been mailed to vot­ers yet and isn’t acces­si­ble, we opt­ed to source descrip­tions of the can­di­dates from their own cam­paign web­sites, which are avail­able to voters.

This approach allowed us to pro­vide respon­dents with infor­ma­tion about the can­di­dates that is (aside from some light edit­ing) iden­ti­cal­ly word­ed to what they’d see if they went to each candidate’s web­site and read their About pages.

Jason Rantz failed to men­tion this cru­cial­ly impor­tant fact to his lis­ten­ers when read­ing from his ques­tion, and Fer­rell also failed to men­tion it. Instead, both men dis­hon­est­ly tried to insin­u­ate dur­ing their exchange that NPI had gen­er­at­ed the descrip­tions of the can­di­dates. Both of them had obvi­ous­ly read the post and seen the ques­tion as well as my expla­na­tion of how the ques­tion was devel­oped, yet they chose to with­hold this infor­ma­tion from KTTH’s listeners.

This is sad­ly what pass­es for rig­or­ous dis­course on right wing talk radio.

Notice also how, after Fer­rell starts slam­ming our research, he stum­bles, leav­ing a cri­tique half-formed, just hang­ing out there. He serves up the false “push poll” label and then tells Rantz: “The back­ground that they put for me, you know, real­ly was not… was not suf­fi­cient… was not ful­ly…” He abrupt­ly reverts at that point to call­ing our research a “push poll,” rather than fin­ish­ing his thought.

The back­ground that they put for me was not suf­fi­cient… not fully…

Not ful­ly what, May­or Ferrell?

We took part of what you (or your consultant/campaign staff) wrote about your can­di­da­cy and showed it to vot­ers. How we might have cho­sen to describe you does not mat­ter because our objec­tive was to describe you using your words, and we accom­plished that goal with the help of your website.

What about your bio­graph­i­cal excerpt was “not suf­fi­cient”? The excerpt men­tions your cur­rent posi­tion in the com­mu­ni­ty as a local elect­ed offi­cial. It men­tions your expe­ri­ence as a pros­e­cu­tor. It men­tions your work on behalf of crime vic­tims. Those are the very motifs or the­mat­ic ele­ments of your “Meet Jim” page. We read your biog­ra­phy from top to bot­tom in an effort to fair­ly excerpt from it.

If we had includ­ed crit­i­cism of your oppo­nent Leesa Man­ion — which is what you imme­di­ate­ly piv­ot­ed to talk­ing about once you were done slam­ming our research with Rantz — well, now, that would have been prej­u­di­cial and inflammatory.

Read­ers, here’s what Fer­rell said to Rantz right after his “push poll” com­ments, show­ing that his real gripe is that we did­n’t do a push poll in his favor:

JIM FERRELL: Well, this is a clas­sic push poll, um, and it clear­ly does­n’t reflect, actu­al­ly, her actu­al expe­ri­ence. And the back­ground that they put for me, you know, real­ly was not… was not suf­fi­cient… was not ful­ly… it’s a clas­sic, what they call push poll.

JASON RANTZ: Yeah.

JIM FERRELL: Yeah, here’s the sit­u­a­tion. Most peo­ple don’t know this. Many peo­ple do not know this, but they will when this cam­paign is over. My oppo­nent has nev­er tried a crim­i­nal case. She’s run­ning to lead an office of tri­al attor­neys. Hun­dreds of pros­e­cu­tors. And she has nev­er once in that time trav­eled or tried one crim­i­nal case. I, on the oth­er hand, have tried hun­dreds of them and han­dled thou­sands of them because I was a pros­e­cu­tor for nine­teen years, a real pros­e­cu­tor in a court­room. I don’t think she’s ever tried any case.

Imag­ine if we had put the above crit­i­cism of Leesa Man­ion into our ques­tion! With­out a cor­re­spond­ing crit­i­cism of Fer­rell, it would def­i­nite­ly have been a loaded ques­tion — the very thing that we strive to avoid in each and every poll we do.

Fer­rel­l’s recent behav­ior on the cam­paign trail leaves me won­der­ing if he real­izes what juris­dic­tion he’s in and what race he’s running.

This is King Coun­ty, one of the most Demo­c­ra­t­ic and one of the most pro­gres­sive local­i­ties in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, where over two-thirds of vot­ers con­sid­er them­selves Democ­rats, accord­ing to our research. Where about three-fourths of vot­ers backed Joe Biden and Kamala Har­ris two years ago.

Going on right wing talk radio and trash­ing the work of one of the few pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tions that does inde­pen­dent elec­toral research is a ridicu­lous, self-defeat­ing move for a pros­e­cut­ing attor­ney hope­ful in one of the most pro­gres­sive coun­ties in the coun­try. It’s an unforced error. King Coun­ty is sim­ply not a place where play­ing to the Repub­li­can base improves your like­li­hood of victory.

For­mer Coun­cilmem­ber Kathy Lam­bert found this out to her cost last year. Not rec­og­niz­ing that the dis­trict she has long rep­re­sent­ed was not Repub­li­can turf any­more, she and her cam­paign team launched vicious attack mail­ers against Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger Sarah Per­ry and her 2nd Dis­trict col­league Gir­may Zahi­lay, who is one of the best, most com­pas­sion­ate, most ener­getic, kind­est peo­ple in local pol­i­tics. The mail­ers had the effect of out­ing Lam­bert as a right wing Trump Repub­li­can to vot­ers. It was as if Lam­bert had bought the tallest pos­si­ble flag­pole and run a mas­sive Trump flag up the pole for every­one, every­where to see.

Those mail­ers were the death knell for Lam­bert’s cam­paign. After she ini­tial­ly refused to apol­o­gize or acknowl­edge wrong­do­ing, the Seat­tle Times un-endorsed her and backed Per­ry. The Real­tors dumped her. The Mariners apol­o­gized for giv­ing her mon­ey and made a dona­tion to Per­ry. Lam­bert was also forced to give up her com­mit­tee lead­er­ship posi­tions on the Coun­cil. She then hand­i­ly lost the elec­tion to Per­ry and uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly depart­ed office a few weeks lat­er.

Our polling shows that Fer­rell and Man­ion start out this race tied, with over eight in ten vot­ers not sure. Fer­rell could have read the find­ing and said to his team, You know what? We have a real oppor­tu­ni­ty here. This race is wide open, and this research is evi­dence of that. It is unlike­ly that any­one else will pub­licly poll this race. We should reach out to NPI, get cof­fee, find out as much as we can. 

But instead, Fer­rell went on The Jason Rantz Show and indulged in Trumpian rhetoric with a man who dis­trib­utes right wing pro­pa­gan­da for a liv­ing… a whole week after the Top Two elec­tion results demon­strat­ed that there is no red tsuna­mi wash­ing through Wash­ing­ton, as Repub­li­cans have been gid­di­ly expect­ing.

I don’t own a work­ing crys­tal ball, so I can’t tell you how the 2022 King Coun­ty Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney con­test will turn out. This I do know: Most vot­ers in King Coun­ty are look­ing for eth­i­cal, effec­tive, pro­gres­sive rep­re­sen­ta­tion, not irre­spon­si­ble can­di­dates who yuk it up with the likes of Jason Rantz on KTTH.