OR-4: Sid Leiken's implausible and baffling explanations continue

Kari Chisholm

Last Friday, it was the deadline for congressional candidate Sid Leiken to provide some documents to the state elections division. I've now got those documents for you - and let me tell ya, they'd be funny, if they weren't so sad.

To recap: Leiken's mayoral campaign reported a payment of $2000 to SWL Consulting, Sid's own company. Once questions were raised, Leiken amended his filings to note that the payment was really a reimbursement to P&G Marketing for polling services. But when evidence of the existence of P&G Marketing was lacking, the DPO filed a complaint - and Leiken claimed that P&G Marketing was a polling firm controlled by his mother - a real estate agent. The state demanded the records of the poll, Leiken lawyered up (with top GOP election lawyer John DiLorenzo), and here we go.

Read the 12 pages of documents yourself (300k, PDF). As you read 'em, decide for yourself: do Leiken's explanations pass the laugh test?

Leiken claims that his firm, SWL Consulting, paid his mom's firm, P&G Marketing, a sum of $2000 in cash in order to do the polling. The alleged receipt for the cash is dated February 25, even though other documents claim that the poll was conducted a week earlier, February 17-19. Why did SWL Consulting pay for the poll, instead of his campaign paying for it? When this story first broke, Leiken claimed his treasurer had been out of town, and he needed to make the payment. Now, I could understand a hurry-up if you had to get a payment to a pollster before a poll could be conducted - but that wasn't the case here. What was the rush? Why not just pay P&G directly from the campaign account? Why move the money - in cash - through SWL Consulting? His explanations don't make sense.

Leiken claims the $2000, in cash, was paid to his mother in order to conduct a survey of Springfield residents. According to the unsigned and undated first-person statement (supposedly from his mom, but her name isn't on it), she called 268 Springfield residents - and got 200 of them to listen to a complex 120-word statement on fuel taxes and then answer three yes/no questions.

I'm no pollster, but here's what I'm noticing:

• There's no way that 200 of 268 people would listen to a 120-word statement about fuel taxes. A lot more than that would decline to participate and hang up. (Never mind that she says "268 calls were made" - does that include no-answers, busy signals, etc.? Even if that's 268 connected calls, it doesn't add up.)

• She just called random residents? What kind of poll is that? At a minimum, a legit political pollster would call registered voters. Beyond that, you'd want to make sure you were calling likely voters, either by asking a screening question, or calling people who demonstrated a history of voting in local off-year special elections.

• Where's the demographic info? Did this poll match the number of men and women in the city? Democrats and Republicans? What sort of nonsense poll doesn't include these sorts of basics?

• There's no report here of a margin-of-error, a basic requirement of a poll. Even somebody just pretending to be a legit pollster would know how to find a sample-size and margin-of-error calculator on the internet. FWIW, I calculated the margin of error on this survey at 6.92% -- pretty big given that the third question ended up 51% to 42%.

None of this makes any sense. And while there's no law against hiring a really bad "pollster", even one that's your mother, the bizarre lack of detail raises the question: did any of this actually happen? Or are we looking at a lot of smoke and mirrors designed to distract attention from some other sort of transaction? Was Leiken just pocketing campaign cash? Or handing it over to his mom?

So far, no sign that anybody's asking the questions I asked last week: Sid Leiken claims that he "periodically commissions polls on city issues". But there's not a drop of evidence in any of his campaign finance reports - in ORESTAR and pre-ORESTAR - that he's ever paid for any polling with campaign funds before.

So, did he fail to report those expenditures? Was he doing polling with non-campaign funds (perhaps city funds)? Or was his claim of past polls entirely bogus?

It's got to be one of those three options. And none of 'em will smell very nice.

By Kari Chisholm July 24, 2009