Patterson-Flynn race heats up

Flynn accuses opposition of smear campaign

By Pat Hatfield
BEACON STAFF WRITER

posted Oct 13, 2008 - 2:31:57pm

The race is heating up between rivals for the District 26 seat in the Florida House of Representatives.

Voters will choose Nov. 4 between incumbent Republican Pat Patterson and his challenger, Democrat Barry Flynn.

Flynn said Patterson’s supporters have used telephone polling to smear him. He said there has been a pattern of similar attacks against previous Patterson opponents.

Patterson denies the charges.

Flynn, a former journalist making his first bid for elected office, hopes to unseat Patterson, who’s served in the District 26 seat since 2002 and held the District 27 seat 1998-2000.

Flynn said pollsters working for Patterson’s election are suggesting Flynn has an arrest record, might have stolen money from an employer, and even that he had been accused of child molestation.

“An extensive and sophisticated campaign to slander me is under way with telephone calls to the voters of Florida House District 26,” Flynn told Patterson in a Sept. 30 letter.

Patterson said Flynn must be making it up.

“I don’t think he was really honest. I think it’s just a media stunt,” Patterson said.

But three people who received the calls and talked to The Beacon back up Flynn’s story. They said pollsters asked questions like whether they would still vote for Flynn if they knew he had been accused of assault or unlawful entry.

A spokeswoman for the Republican Party said the party’s telephone poll-takers are asking no such questions.

***

Flynn was arrested, once, about eight years ago. The charges were dropped, and he eventually received a court settlement of more than $34,999 from the person who accused him.

Flynn tells the story:

Flynn lived in Orlando, he said, and had a long-running dispute with a neighbor whose dog was frequently unleashed.

Once while Flynn was jogging, the dog attacked him. Flynn called Animal Control.

When the dog attacked him a second time and bit him, Flynn chased the animal. The dog’s owner accused Flynn of burglary, assault and animal cruelty, and Flynn was arrested.

All charges against Flynn were dropped. He went to court and got a settlement in excess of $34,000 against the dog’s owner, and also got a false-arrest settlement from the City of Orlando.

***

Ann Thomas of Orange City and Sue Murphy and Scott Weiss of DeLand all said they got calls about the District 26 race from pollsters who made untoward suggestions about Flynn.

Thomas said the caller hung up on her when she started asking questions.

“A man called. He stated that he was from some survey company, and that he’d like to spend a couple of minutes talking to me,” Thomas said. She didn’t recall the company name.

She said the call came in just as she was getting ready to watch President George Bush’s televised address on the economic crisis, which was at 9 p.m. Sept. 24.

The man asked Thomas’ opinion about Patterson’s performance on taxes and insurance, and his overall performance in office. He asked Thomas if she were inclined to vote for Patterson, and when she said “No,” he asked about her voter registration. Thomas said she was a Democrat.

The man asked her if she would be more or less favorable about voting for Flynn if she knew Flynn had been convicted of sexual crimes, first against children, then against adults. He asked if it would change her opinion if she knew Flynn had been convicted of mishandling funds in his last job.

At that point, Thomas said, she asked the caller where he was getting his information. The man gave her no information, and hung up after a couple of exchanges, she said.

Thomas said she’s had survey calls before, but none like this one.

“They would never give negative information or try to discredit anyone,” she said.

Retired schoolteacher Murphy said she got what she referred to as a “trickster” call around 9 p.m. Sept. 24.

She said the young male caller may have given the name of a marketing company, “But if he did, it didn’t register.”

Murphy said she was suspicious, and asked the man who funded the calls. The caller told her the call wasn’t to solicit funds, but a survey from a marketing firm.

He asked Murphy her opinion about Gov. Charlie Crist’s performance.

Then, the caller asked her if she knew who Barry Flynn and Pat Patterson were. It took Murphy a moment to place Flynn.

The caller asked Murphy, “Would it affect my opinion if I knew or were told that Pat Patterson was heavily funded by the insurance industry.”

Murphy told him it would come as no surprise — the industry often funds candidates from both parties.

“Then, he said, would it affect me to know Barry Flynn had been arrested several times in the past. I said yes.”

The caller asked Murphy if it would affect her to know Flynn had been involved in theft of money.

“I said, ‘Now you’re over the line — planting seeds in people’s minds of allegations,’” Murphy said.

Murphy said she called her phone company to see if they could trace the call, and was told a subpoena would be required.

Weiss, another Democrat, said he also received one of the calls, around the same time. He couldn’t remember the exact date.

The caller asked fairly innocuous questions at first, Weiss said.

Then she asked questions about Pat Patterson.

“She soon found out I’m a loyal Democrat, and all questions were designed to get me to reconsider,” Weiss said.

The woman asked Weiss if it would affect his opinion of Flynn if Weiss knew Flynn had been accused of assault, or if he had been accused of unlawful entry.

Weiss replied being accused is not the same as being convicted. When he asked the caller for information about convictions, she told him she didn’t have that information. She couldn’t tell him who was sponsoring the poll, either.

“I don’t like push polls, no matter who they’re for,” Weiss said.

***

In Flynn’s Sept. 30 letter to Patterson about the telephone polls, Flynn wrote, “These contemptible lies are clearly designed to thwart the electoral process.”

Flynn called the letter “a shot across Patterson’s bow.”

On Oct. 7, Patterson said he had received Flynn’s letter by certified mail.

“The Democrats and the Republicans do polls,” Patterson said. “The candidates don’t have anything to do with it.”

Patterson said he doubts Flynn’s description of the pollsters’ scripts.

“I don’t think they asked those kind of questions,” Patterson said. “I don’t want to comment on what was asked, because I find it hard to believe.”

If pollsters had been asking those kind of questions, he would have heard about it, Patterson said, and he hadn’t.

***

Flynn said hearing about the false allegations has been distressing to his family.

He said he would welcome the opportunity to ask Patterson about the calls in a public forum but, so far, Patterson has refused offers by Flynn, the League of Women Voters, The Daytona Beach News-Journal, WMFE-TV and others to appear with Flynn in debates or forums.

***

Katie Gordon, press secretary for the Republican Party of Florida, said the party authorizes polling, but “certainly nothing of any push-polling or attempts to sway voters — just polling.”

Gordon said the party’s polls are designed to measure what issues are important in various areas of the state, and gauge how voters feel about certain candidates.

The polls are used to help develop campaign strategies, Gordon said, and the telephone scripts might include negative statements about Republican and opposition candidates.

When told about the alleged content of the calls received by West Volusians, Gordon said, “I’m not able to connect the calls you’re talking about to the calling we’re doing.”

Party officials work with a variety of outside vendors and consultants, Gordon said. She wasn’t able to provide specific telephone scripts.

— pat@beacononlinenews.com

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