For Wal-Mart, Another Everyday Low

by Mike Hall, Jun 30, 2006

When there’s some real good news—not some phony PR stunt—about a company or celebrity, the phrase “They couldn’t buy that kind of publicity,” usually pops up. But in the case of a poll supporting Wal-Mart, turns out Wal-Mart could. And did.

Pollster Thomas Riehle recently wrote a column on the respected website, RealClearPolitics, claiming that by a 3-to-1 margin, those polled said it would be a mistake for Democrats to make an issue in the fall election of Wal-Mart and the retail giant’s well-documented cases of paying workers’ poverty wages, attacking workers who seek to form unions and dumping its employee health care costs onto taxpayers.

Ed Sills, Texas AFL-CIO communications director, who passed this on to us, found the poll to be suspect:

The findings got even more suspicious when Riehle added this slanted shot on Wal-Mart’s behalf: “The temptation to ’stand up to Wal-Mart’ as a campaign ploy reflects the sometimes cocooning and self-deceptive nature of Democratic Party activists.”

Riehle…then makes the ridiculous argument that Wal-Mart gets so many job applications that it actually is more selective than—I’m not making this up—either Harvard or MENSA, the high-IQ society.

Sills is right to be suspicious. According to an update that appeared at the top of the Web column:

This article failed to properly disclose a business relationship between Thomas Riehle’s polling firm, RT Strategies, and the pro-Wal-Mart group, Working Families for Wal-Mart. The data cited in this article is derived from questions Working Families for Wal-Mart paid to have added to RT Strategies monthly omnibus poll. This is a service RT Strategies offers to anyone in return for a fee, but it is most certainly something Riehle should have disclosed upfront when writing an opinion essay about the results. He has acknowledged and apologized for the mistake. We apologize to readers as well.

Another everyday low.

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