Louisiana Voice

The Advocate-Times Picayune on Sunday trumpeted the results of a poll the publication said reflected strong backing for Jeff Landry’s political agenda.

The story said Landry received a 56 percent overall favorable rating in the poll, conducted by New Orleans pollster Ron Faucheux on behalf of the newspaper but in reality, there was little chance for it to show a different result; it may as well have been commissioned by Landry or the Louisiana Republican Party.

I happened to have been one of the 800 Louisiana voters who received a call and participated in the poll and from the way the questions were structured, only an anarchist could possibly have taken issue with Landry’s agenda.

It was a classic “push-poll,” where the questions are couched in such a way as to elicit the desired response and for The Advocate-Times Picayune to promote the results as news is, simply put, lazy reporting.

Ron Faucheux is, by all accounts, a reputable, non-partisan political consultant but this poll was less than credible – not because I happen to disagree with many of Landry’s positions (I do) but because the questions afforded me no opportunity to say how I really felt about certain issues.

For example: yes, education in Louisiana is a problem but allowing parental participation is playing with fire. A single complaint from a parent can wreak havoc on what books a child may read or what history he or she may be taught. That’s not improving education; it’s instilling mass confusion for teachers and principals.

Crime, too, is a huge problem but gutting the budgets of public defenders is certainly not the solution. Nor does it address the problem by making it more difficult for the wrongfully convicted to have their cases re-heard. And there have already been some 100 individuals who have been exonerated after serving decades at Angola for crimes they never committed, thanks to over-zealous prosecutors willing to sell their souls for a quick conviction.

There were others, but every single question (except for my religion, which I refused to reveal), was a multiple-choice question that made me to be either a full-throated dedicated Landry supporter or a bomb-thrower. I’m neither.

But I don’t think the pollster recorded any of my responses after I insisted on expounding on my answers.