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PERSON PROFILEFrank LuntzSome call it spinning, some call it massaging the message, some have even dubbed it LuntzSpeak, but none dare call what Frank Luntz has been peddling the truthOn Halloween night in 2003, as many Bush Administration officials were heading off for traditional family values trick-or-treating, the lights were still on over at the Department of Interior. Secretary Gale Norton's staff was putting the finishing touches on a news release announcing the appointment of four new members of the Board of Directors of the National Park Foundation (NPF), an organization chartered by Congress in 1967 to "raise private support for National Parks, and to build a broad community of people who care about their parks." The four new members of the NPF Board - chaired by Secretary Norton - were Bruce Benson of Denver, Colorado (owner and president of Benson Mineral Group, Inc., an oil and gas production company); Spencer Fox Eccles, Salt Lake City, Utah (Chairman of the Intermountain Banking Group for Wells Fargo); Linda J. Fisher (most recently served as the Environmental Protection Agency's Acting Administrator and before that was Deputy Administrator of the Agency during the first two years of the Bush Administration); and Regan Kimberlin Gammon (Vice-President of the Kimberlin Family Partnership in Austin, Texas). "Our national parks are special places that remind us of our heritage, our strength and courage as a nation and the freedom that we share," Norton said. "We look forward to utilizing the extraordinary talents and experiences that these new board members bring to the National Park Foundation." On reading the Interior Dept.'s press release, Scott Silver, executive director of the Oregon-based environmental group, Wild Wilderness, was struck by what seemed to be familiar-sounding terminology. Could Secretary Norton be pulling language from the playbook of Frank Luntz, the nationally known GOP consultant and polling whiz? From helping craft Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America," to advising Republicans to take the gloves off in going after President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky affair, to frequent memos on how to politically use 9/11, to reams of advice for Republicans on how to talk about the war on terrorism, the environment and other hot-button issues, to being a consultant to NBC's The West Wing, to being named by Time magazine as one of "50 of America's most promising leaders aged 40 and under," Frank Luntz has been massaging the GOP's messages, occasionally putting a kinder, gentler spin on GOP core issues, and taking the pulse of the nation's voters for more than a decade. Luntz's deceptionFrank Luntz founded the Alexandria, VA-based, Luntz Research Companies, "the premier corporate and public affairs communications firm in Washington," in 1992. According to Dun and Bradstreet, he owns all 5,000 shares of the company. The D&B report said that as of May 24, 2004, Luntz was listed as President and someone named Nick Mirisis was listed as Vice President. It appears that Mirisis was hired by Luntz despite having some well-worn skeletons in his closet. According to press reports, in 1999, Mirisis, the former Student Body President of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, copied a paper and turned it in as his own work in an English honors class. A few years later, he was forced to resign as the deputy campaign manager and congressional press secretary of Republican Kentucky congressman Ernie Fletcher's campaign for governor when news of the plagiarizing incident was revealed. "After the Charlotte campus newspaper revealed his academic fraud," Louisville's The Courier-Journal reported, "the newspaper's editor, a former girlfriend of Mirisis, accused him of sending an e-mail that threatened her with sexual torture and death and had pornographic images attached." An administrative board at the University suspended Mirisis for two years over the e-mail incident. A white-washed bio at the web site of NCEITA ("the primary voice of the Information Technologies industry in North Carolina"), says that Mirisis serves as Vice President for Business Development & Special Projects. He is also credited with working on a "a seven month insurance branding campaign for South & Latin American markets of American Express as well as campaign work for President Silvio Berlusconi of Italy and the Governor's race in the North Marianas Islands." As of this writing (October 6), Mirisis is not listed as a member of the "Team" at Luntz Research Companies, and according to a spokesperson at the company, Mirisis has not been with the company "for a couple of years." Although Frank Luntz more likely prefers the "secret" memo to the scrutiny of the media, in recent days he's been making news himself. In late September, Luntz, a regular staple on MSNBC's talk shows was dropped from the cable network's debate coverage when it "cancelled his long-scheduled focus group two days before the debate," the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reported. Luntz, angered over his dismissal, told Kurtz that he was dismayed over the firing because he hadn't "done" any "GOP work since 2001." "I think they buckled to political pressure," Luntz told Kurtz. "They caved ... Why is it that Democrats are allowed to do this" after leaving politics, "but Republicans aren't?" That statement, according to David Brock's web site, Media Matters for America, was patently false. According to MMFA: On September 2, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported: "Earlier this year, GOP pollster Frank Luntz advised Republicans to never talk about Iraq or homeland security without first mentioning how '9/11 changed everything.'" On September 1, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported: "Republican pollster Frank Luntz did his best Tuesday to pump up Ohio's Republicans at a delegation breakfast.'If you guys fail, if John Kerry becomes president by a percent or half a percent, I think you're going to be pretty regretful,' he said." During California's governor recall campaign, Luntz also worked for Republicans. On September 7, 2003, the New York Times reported: "Frank Luntz ... was hired by the group that triggered the recall, Rescue California, Recall Gray Davis." (A USA Today article called this group "Republican-led"). Similarly, an October 23, 2003, Weekly Standard article referred to Luntz's "client Arnold Schwarzenegger." In addition, a June 2004 memo by Luntz titled "Communicating The Principles Of Prevention & Protection In The War On Terror" coached Republicans on how to connect the Iraq war with the war on terror, including concepts like "It is better to fight the War on Terror on the streets of Baghdad than on the streets of New York or Washington" and "9/11 changed everything," which have been staples of Republican rhetoric for a year. In 2002, Luntz wrote a similar memo for Republicans advising them "how to discuss environmental issues," MMFA reported. "This memo was particularly memorable for the advice Luntz offered on how to deal with the emerging scientific consensus that global warming is a real phenomenon with potentially dangerous consequences. Luntz advised Republicans to exploit the last 'window of opportunity' for Republicans to argue that the science of global warming is uncertain. He wrote: 'The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science.'" (When I called Luntz Research to ask about these discrepancies, I was told that the only person who could comment on this and whether the company worked for Republican clients over the past few years was Luntz, and that he was not available.) Josh Micah Marshall also recently noted on his web log, Talking Points Memo, that a June article in Roll Call had discussed Luntz's love/hate relationship with members of the House Republican Caucus: "At the highest level several leadership sources confirmed that Speaker Dennis Hastert (Ill.) and his office are not fans of Luntz or his work, while Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Texas) has hired him in the past and is an eager customer for Luntz's research," Roll Call reported. Luntz has been a busy fellow over the past decade: After helping then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich's draft his "Contract with America," Luntz later wisely recommended the party tone down its rhetoric when an editorial in the New York Times maintained that "it became clear that the Gingrich revolution had gone too far in its attacks on environmental law." In 1997, Luntz distributed a 222-page report called "The Language of the 21st Century," a wide-ranging work that he claimed was his "most serious effort to put together an effective, comprehensive national communication strategy." During the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Luntz prepared a confidential memo for congressional Republicans urging them to "'speak out' on the sexual allegations swirling around President Clinton," columnist David Corn reported. "It was right not to rush to judgment," Luntz advised in the four-page memo. "It was right to let the media carry the weight of investigation. It was right to give the president time to respond. But ... it's time to speak out." In a 2002 memo to GOP leaders, Luntz instructed Republicans to make Tom Daschle the Newt Gingrich of 2002, saying that it was "time for Congressional Republicans to personalize the individual that is standing directly in the way... Remember what the Democrats did to Gingrich? We need to do exactly the same thing to Daschle." Polling for dollarsIn 1997, according to Salon's Dante Chinni, "Luntz was formally reprimanded by the American Association for Public Opinion Research for his work polling on the GOP's 1994 "Contract with America" campaign document." Luntz is "possibly the best example of what we could call the pollster pundit: someone who both purports to scientifically poll the opinions of the public, and then also interpret that data to support his own -- in Luntz's case, conservative -- point of view," Chinni reported in a May 20, 2000 Salon piece. "This is what allows Luntz to face a room full of journalists and, in all seriousness, proclaim George W. Bush's jittery, time-delayed appearance on David Letterman -- the one which prompted boos from the audience -- a total success. "It's what allows Luntz to proclaim that Giuliani would've been no more hurt from his admission of marital difficulties than his admission that he has cancer. 'He beat crime, he beat drugs, he beat unemployment, he beat welfare, he beat trash in the streets, he beat the squeegee guy,' Luntz said. 'He's like a mayor machine.' "What's more, it's what allows Luntz to do this without citing a single polling result, a single number, and yet still be taken quite seriously as a pollster." Luntz is an Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute, a profoundly partisan anti-environmental Washington, D.C.-based right wing think tank founded in 1961 to advocate for "free markets", "individual responsibility", and "the preservation of America's national security." According to GM Watch, an organization founded in 1998 "to report on the growing concerns about genetic engineering" (genetic modification), and "about the rapid release of genetically modified (GM) foods and crops into the environment and into our food chain" the Hudson Institute has been funded by, amongst others: AgrEvo, Dow AgroSciences, Monsanto, Novartis Crop Protection, Zeneca, DuPont, DowElanco, ConAgra, Cargill, Procter & Gamble." Between 1987 and 2002, the Hudson Institute received 205 grants totaling more than $13.5 million, according to MediaTransparency.org (see grants directed to Frank Luntz). Included amongst the coterie of the Institute's benefactors are The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, The Carthage Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation and the Earhart Foundation. About three weeks before the invasion of Iraq, the New York Times reported that Bush Administration officials, concerned that they were taking a beating over its environmental record, "softened their language to appeal to suburban voters, speaking out for protecting national parks and forests, advocating investment in environment technologies and shifting emphasis to the future rather than the present." This new awakening was the direct result of a memorandum prepared by the Luntz Research Companies. Luntz's memo wasn't aimed at re-ordering the administration's environmental priorities; it was intended to change the public's perception of that record. Luntz warned that "the environment is probably the single issue on which Republicans in general -- and President Bush in particular -- are most vulnerable." The memo suggested administration officials moderate their language: For example, instead of using the term "global warming," the memo advised substituting "climate change" because "while global warming has catastrophic communications attached to it, climate change sounds a more controllable and less emotional challenge"; and it suggested substituting "conservationist" for "environmentalist" because the latter had the "connotation of extremism." The Luntz memo had been given to the New York Times by the Environmental Working Group, an organization described by the newspaper as "an advocacy group critical of Bush administration policies." Upon further investigation, the Times found that the terms "global warming" and "environmentalist" had been removed from the president's environmental vocabulary and replaced with, you guessed it, "climate change" and "conservationist." Now that's a classic example of LuntzSpeak. "For spinmeister Frank Luntz, objective truth counts for naught," Wild Wilderness' Scott Silver recently told me in an e-mail. "Beating an opponent is all that matters. Unfortunately, when it comes to issues involving our in environment, politically motivated choices based upon spin often have disastrous real world consequences. Protecting clean air, water and other natural resources should never be looked upon as a game and no amount of spin can change the reality resulting from bad choices. To Luntz, it is all game and for the gamesmanship advice he provides his clients, he is royally rewarded."
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MORE LINKSBill Berkowitz Frank Luntz calls Republican leadership in Washington 'One giant whining windbag'On the outs with the GOP, legendary degrader of discourse is moving to California In a 10-page addendum to his new book ""Words that Work -- It's Not What You Say Its What People Hear," Luntz, formerly a top political pollster for the Republican Party, may have written so critically of the party's recent efforts that he has become persona non grata....
Frank Luntz at SourceWatch.org
MediaMatters.org Discredited pollster Luntz lectured Kerry on "credibility"Appearing on FOX News Channel on October 15, discredited pollster Frank Luntz suggested that, despite Senator John Kerry's strong performance in the presidential debates, Kerry was unable to "shift" votes to his favor because voters "don't trust him" and he lacks "credibility." But Luntz appears to have his own credibility problem: On the same day he made those remarks, London's Financial Times published a "Comment" article he wrote making the exact opposite argument about the impact of the presidential debates on the election.
MediaMatters.org MSNBC yanks GOP "pollster" Frank LuntzUpon hearing that MSNBC planned for Republican pollster Frank Luntz to conduct on-air focus groups as part of the cable network's debate coverage tonight, David Brock of the media watchdog group Media Matters sent MSNBC executive Rick Kaplan a letter of complaint. It looks like Kaplan listened.
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Spurned by Washington Republicans, Frank Luntz turns to Canada
