Someone has hired Charlotte-based Market Wise to conduct an in-depth telepoll of Mecklenburg County registered voters on their feelings about the transit tax repeal effort and the CMS bond package.
That someone almost has to be the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce, although Market Wise has also worked with CMS, the Foundation for the Carolinas, and the Office of the Charlotte City Manager on previous occasions.
(Poll workers, although willing to ID their employer, would not ID the client.)
The thrust of the poll, according to several descriptions from those who were surveyed in recent days, is to map respondents’ feelings about both issues and gauge positive and negative name ID for possible anti-repeal and pro-bond leaders.
On transit, several questions attempted to discover which arguments would make voters less likely to support a tax repeal — increased congestion, more pollution, longer commute times were among the canards offered up by the survey. On CMS bonds, the size of the package was plumbed. If you oppose the current package, would you support a smaller one? If so, how small?
Most interesting was the evident attempt to find a battery of high-name ID, high-positives people to put out in front of an anti-repeal, pro-bond campaign. Among the names mentioned and rated were Shirley Fulton, head of the Mecklenburg County bar, Krista Tillman, former AT&T exec, and retiring Charlotte city councilman Pat Mumford.
Recall that three weeks ago we speculated in this space that Mumford, long the city’s go-to guy on transit, was a likely choice to become the public face of an anti-repeal PR effort. Now someone is spending time and money on discovering a retiring pol’s public standing. Odd.
Overall, this survey effort suggests a good bit of flailing about, searching for issues, themes, and personalities which might “sell” rather than refining any core motivating principles.
Anyone remotely attuned to Charlotte beyond the Uptown echo-chamber knows that both CATS and CMS are not viewed locally as responsible stewards of public money. Each organization’s history of frivolous and wasteful spending sees to that.
The truly astounding thing is that advocates for CATS and CMS — like the Chamber, like the Foundation — do not come clean and say, “Yes, there are problems, here is how we will fix them.”
Instead we get poll, poll, poll. Sell, sell, sell. Spin, spin, spin. Deny, deny, deny.
And come November?
Lose. Lose. Lose.
Update: Another name tested was that of former state legislator and GOP fundraiser Ed McMahan. Back in March McMahan responded to an email query to say he did not support the transit tax repeal petition, although he did favor asking the General Assembly to allow some of the revenue to be spent on roads.
