On Tuesday’s Gill Report, broadcast live on WETR 92.3 FM in Knoxville, conservative pundit and Tennessee Star Political Editor Steve Gill baffled at a recent independent poll that stated Bill Lee was leading Tennessee’s GOP primary race. The question remains to be answered of whether or not Lee knew the polling company was tied to one of his campaign consultants. He’s yet to answer the question.
Gill contemplated, “We and a lot of other media outlets across the state were talking about a new poll that was released on Monday that showed Williamson County businessman Bill Lee leading the republican gubernatorial primary for the first time. It was branded and put out by the lead campaign and others as an independent poll.”
He continued:
And yet as we now discover, and you can see the whole story with the details and the links at Tennesseestar.com, that the general consultants for the Bill Lee campaign are actually connected to the company that did the polling. Again, the polling firm that claims Bill Lee is leading in the governor’s race is actually connected to the consultants on the Lee campaign.
Now the Lee campaign didn’t disclose their connection to the polling firm as they’ve promoted results of this supposedly independent poll. Which calls into question the accuracy of the polling data. Now again, Bill Lee has refused to answer the question of whether he knew his campaign consultants were involved with this polling company that he was promoting as an independent poll to lift the spirits of his supporters, maybe raise a little extra money maybe create momentum for his campaign.
He has not answered the questions of whether he knew about the poll in advance, whether his campaign actually paid for the poll and more importantly whether or not those in his campaign who were behind the poll disclosed that to him. If they kept it from him, he probably ought to fire them. If he knew, he probably owes the voters of Tennessee an apology for wrongly trying to fool them into thinking this was some independent poll when it was anything but.
Now the company that did the polling, JMC Analytics frequently uses accompany Victory Phones as the dialer when they conduct their polling. JMC did not reveal whether or not that particular company which is directly tied to one of the consultants on the Lee campaign, was used in this particular poll.
They haven’t answered our question about that. So, they should answer that. They should answer whether Bill Lee knew about the connections before he counted the poll as independent, and if he knew he needs to explain that. If didn’t k now, he needs to explain why his consultants kept it from him and why they’re still on his payroll.
Now again the bottom line is that he may or may not be ahead it may or may not have been a valid poll. The question is whether or not it was actually an independent poll. Whether he paid for it and put it out there falsely proclaiming it to be something it wasn’t. Now the bottom line is, if a candidates not going to be honest with you during the campaign do you think they’re going get a sudden surge of honesty after election day is over?
Listen to the full segment:
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