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The Fair Campaign Practices Commission decided on Thursday that it will begin an investigation of the anonymous phone poll that was conducted throughout Berkeley in July 2006. 

Roger Marquis, who serves as treasurer of the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance 2006 Update PAC-LPO 2006, had complained to the FCPC on Oct. 11 that reportable expenditures had been made for the anonymous telephone poll against Measure J but that no committee had disclosed the expenditures on the first pre-election statement. 

According to Marquis’ complaint, the calling operators had indicated that they worked for Communications Center, Inc., a 19-year-old polling firm with calling centers in Washington, D.C., Spokane, Wash., and Lakeland, Fl.  

Caller ID had identified the calls made to Berkeley residents to be coming from the Spokane area code. 

The complaint stated that several people, including Berkeley resident Sharon Hudson, had received calls from CCI and on recording one or more of the questions had concluded that it had been a “push poll” designed both to gather information and campaign against Measure J, the Landmark Preservation Ordinance Initiative. 

When CCI operations manager Judy Goodrich was contacted by the Daily Planet to verify this information and request the name of the person or organization who had purchased this poll, she acknowledged that her firm was conducting the poll but refrained from revealing their client’s name. 

During public comment, Marquis noted that this particular activity/expenditure should have been reported by the Oct. 5 filing deadline as per BERA and FCPC regulations but that as of Oct. 11 no entity had submitted the required campaign finance documentation. 

“I believe this is a violation of both the city and state election law and request that BERA and/or the FCPC investigate the matter,” he said.  

Kristy van Herick, FCPC secretary and staff counsel, said that no staff investigation had been carried out. She also said that so far the only investigation on the issue had been carried out by the Daily Planet, and that the staff did not have much to add to that. 

Marquis said that push polls had been conducted in the past by Berkeley developer Patrick Kennedy, Mayor Tom Bates and former mayor Shirley Dean and that the Berkeley School District had also conducted polls to judge the support for certain school taxes. 

“What is unusual about the July push poll is that no one is disclosing who is doing it,” he said. 

FCPC chair Eric Weaver pointed out that if hiring an out-of-state polling company helped people to hide what they were doing, this could turn into a tremendous loophole for fair campaign practices.  

Commissioner John Denvir suggested that it might be a good idea to call up people who could have possibly benefited from this poll and ask them point blank if they were behind it. 

“If we ask them directly, then they might be reluctant to say no,” he said.  

Weaver stressed that it was important for the commission not to take names from the Daily Planet and turn into an investigative arm for the newspaper.  

“If Patrick Kennedy has made a donation, he should be asked. If Tom Bates has opposed it, he should be asked. But we shouldn’t go fishing for every name in the paper,” he said.  

Denvir replied that there was nothing wrong with asking people questions to get to the bottom of the matter and that he assumed people would cooperate.  

In the end, the board unanimously passed a motion to direct the staff to carry out an investigation which would involve questioning both opponents and proponents of Measure J, as well as those who were on the Chamber of Commerce PAC list. If nothing is disclosed, then staff would call up CCI and ask them to disclose the name of the party or organization who had asked them to carry out the poll, and if CCI refused to do so, FCPC would come back to them with a subpoena. 

The commission also said that the Oct. 26 election filings would be looked at to see whether anyone listed the polling expenditures on them, although these expenditures should have been reported in the first filing itself.