Neumann's Vanishing Credibility

Once regarded as one of the state’s leading conservatives, former Congressman Mark Neumann has diminished himself so completely that even conservative commentators who once encouraged his candidacy for statewide office no longer take anything he says at face value.

To his credit, I suppose, Neumann is unaffected by his critics, persevering through a humiliating defeat for the state Republican Party endorsement, to polls showing him consistently trailing his Republican rival Scott Walker by anywhere from 20-39 points. All of this despite spending seven figures of his own money on radio, TV, internet and direct mail advertising.

A possible explanation for Neumann’s consistently abysmal performance in the polls is the influence of conservative talk radio hosts like Charlie Sykes and Mark Belling. Sykes and Belling along Vicki McKenna, Jay Weber, Jerry Bader and Jeff Wagner have shown Neumann no mercy whenever he takes indefensible positions on issues or cheap shots at his opponent Scott Walker.

So it really comes as no surprise that the sleazy push polling firm Venture Data has been engaged on behalf of the Neumann campaign to determine exactly how much weight primary voters give to what these professional talkers say. Venture Data has strong ties to Neumann’s polling firm, Public Opinion Strategies (POS). In fact, POS helped found Venture Data and has sub-contracted push polling work to the firm in the past.

According to Wisconsin residents who received the polling calls last weekend, Venture Data refused to identify who was paying for the calls even though state law requires it.

Neumann’s campaign made similar push polling calls in April without identifying who was paying for the calls and dozens of complaints against Neumann’s campaign are pending with the Government Accountability Board as a result.

The Government Accountability Board should investigate both sets of phone calls and issue sanctions against the appropriate players right now or expect to be deluged with complaints of even more egregious campaign violations as we draw closer to the September primary and November general elections.

If the polling firms involved in the nefarious activity won’t divulge who’s paying their bills, the GAB should fine them until their eyes fall out.

As for Neumann, the only thing vanishing faster than his credibility is the cash he keeps pouring into his campaign.