Mystery: Who's Doing Polling on City Election?

Mayor ’s campaign alleges that an unknown group is targeting her with a negative “push-poll”, which is a poll designed to push people's opinion in a certain direction.  According to her campaign many Benicia residents received calls Wednesday evening from someone claiming he was conducting an independent survey.

Both Alan Schwartzman's and Mayor Patterson's campaigns said the caller started by asking questions about Valero Refining Company.  and are running for mayor of Benicia.

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Bill Day, a Valero spokesman in San Antonio, TX wouldn’t comment on the poll but local representative Chris Howe said, “Valero has not made any financial contributions to any campaign committees (either individual or independent) for the upcoming City elections.  Any such contributions would be a matter of public  record and would be disclosed as required by law.  We are also not conducting, participating, or otherwise involved in, any polling,  nor do I know who is.”

Vice-Mayor has sent out a release saying he doesn’t know who is doing the polling.  In the release he said, “Not only am I not aware of who is conducting these calls I am irritated to no end that survey callers would be negative toward any candidate.  It is tough enough being a candidate without having an individual or group that we have no control over or association with create negativity and attempt to influence our elections.   I ask whoever is doing this to please stop.”

A copy of the release from Mayor Patterson's campaign and the statement from Vice-Mayor Schwartzman's campaign are attached to this article as PDFs.

Patch will update this article as more information becomes available.

To see an analysis of campaign spending in the last mayoral campaign, click here.