Telephone poll about King County executive candidate Dow Constantine is assailed

King County executive candidate Susan Hutchison said Friday she doesn't know who paid for a telephone poll this week that asked voters' reactions to a series of negative statements about her opponent, Dow Constantine.

"I don't know anything about it," Hutchison said of the calls, which recipients said suggested Constantine destroyed evidence in an unspecified investigation or dispute, described him as a career politician and, in an early version of the poll, noted he's unmarried and lives with a partner.

"I don't know all the people who are conducting polls," Hutchison said. " It's a very separate operation from us."

Hutchison's campaign manager, Jordan McCarren, declined to discuss the poll or who may have paid for it. "We just don't talk about polling," he said. "We don't discuss any proprietary polling information."

Seattle resident Kaye Kilgour, a Constantine supporter who was called by a pollster Monday, said she was particularly offended by a question that asked if her choice of a candidate would be affected by learning that Constantine is 47 years old, has never married and lives with a partner.

Kilgour said she believes the question was asked in order to spread the idea Constantine is homosexual. "I was offended by their thought that it would change my mind or change the mind of the next person," she said.

"My girlfriend and I have a great relationship," Constantine said when asked Friday about the poll. "We're a strong team and I think that it is fascinating that my opponents would be asking folks about their reaction to that."

Constantine and Shirley Carlson met when they were University of Washington students working at a student-run radio station.

He called the poll "despicable" and speculated it may be testing negative messages for possible use in advertising.

Kilgour said she also was asked questions suggesting Constantine had "scrubbed a hard drive" to avoid turning over evidence under circumstances that weren't made clear, and that he was, in her words, "a forever politician."

When state Rep. Dave Upthegrove, D-Des Moines, was polled on Wednesday, two days after Kilgour, he was not asked about Constantine's living arrangement. Upthegrove said questions referred to the scrubbing of a computer hard drive, an alleged state Public Disclosure Commission investigation of Constantine, and the length of his political career.

Constantine said he isn't aware of any PDC investigation and "can't imagine" what the disk-scrubbing claim is based on.

Upthegrove said the questions seemed to constitute a "push poll" aimed more at eroding support for Constantine than at finding out voters' opinions.

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105