PRIMARY CAMPAIGN TRAIL NOTES

Last weekend, at our town’s annual Apple Harvest Day festival, as I passed the Democratic Party booth in the array along Central Avenue downtown, someone mentioned that Rick Santorum was in the crowd.

“I’m not sure I’d recognize him if I saw him,” I confessed. Not having a television does limit my awareness in some ways.

“Oh, you’d know him if you saw him. He’s taller than me,” my informant said.

As it turned out, I did catch glimpses of the former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania moving through pedestrian jam. It was his blue sports coat and khaki pants, mostly, that said GOP hopeful – or possibly, staff. Still, he was talking to an aide, rather than shaking hands and greeting potential voters. Could it be? What would I say? Or ask, pointedly? Besides, we were being carried along in opposite directions.

Later in the afternoon, at a booth where I was volunteering, I was given a business card at the end of a pleasurable bit of small talk. The next day, reading the news, I learned that this was Santorum’s host for the event. Little did I know that over breakfast just downstream, the candidate had received an earful from two Planned Parenthood supporters.

Maybe he’d had enough for the day?

~*~

As I’ve mentioned, our telephone’s been ringing with presidential primary campaign pitches. Some of them are robo-calls we promptly ignore. Talk to us in person, or else!

And then there are the surveys, sometimes several a day. Some of them are legitimately neutral, but others, well … let’s just say it’s quickly obvious who’s paying the bill.

Sometimes it’s a bit amusing, like the one from a first-time questioner working for the Carson camp. She stumbled through her script but had our sympathy. It’s how you learn the process, after all.

But then there was one that started asking if we were “strongly likely,” “somewhat likely,” “somewhat not likely,” or “strongly not likely” to vote for Trump, Carson, Bush, Kasich … and then suddenly turned to questions solely about Bush. Wait a minute! You claimed to be an independent research firm! What about the dozen or so other hopefuls on the GOP ticket?

At least this one wasn’t turning to a pitch for donations.

~*~

Considering the number of phone calls we’re getting from so-called opinion research outfits, I am concerned about the validity of the results. If a few people are getting the equivalent of “voting early and often” in the opinion sampling, what’s to preclude toying with the results? Why not say something that spins the outrage or anxiety? Why not boost a marginal candidate? Why not jump on a hot-air balloon for a short ride? Or try to deflate it?

More to the point: the only result I truly care about takes place in the election booth. Why can’t we concentrate on the issues until then, rather than the artificial horse race? (Or, in this case, elephant race, for the most part?)