Watts fires back, calls Hutchins’ poll numbers ‘untrue and untrustworthy’
By JIM BROOKS
Nelson County Gazette / WBRT Radio
Sunday, Nov. 2, 2014,4:30 p.m. — Judge Executive Dean Watts says the poll numbers released Friday by independent candidate Tim Hutchins in a press release and newspaper advertising are “untrue and untrustworthy.”
Click ad to enlarge.
The poll, released to the media and published Friday, Oct. 31 in Hutchins’ campaign ad in The Kentucky Standard, shows Hutchins with a three point lead over Watts, 45 to 43 percent. Republican Pete Trzop was a distant third with an 8 percent showing with 5 percent of polled voters undecided who they will vote for in the race.
In new radio ad airing on WBRT, Watts said he and three independent news organizations independently were unable to locate any information about the company credited for Hutchins poll — “Kentuckians for a better tomorrow.”
“It’s really ironic that it came out on Friday when the poll was conducted on Oct. 26th,” he said told WBRT in an interview with Roth Stratton. The release of the poll was apparently time to prevent Watts from having to for a rebuttal.
“But that’s politics at its best,” Watts said. “Hopefully the citizens of Nelson County will read through all that as political rhetoric.”
The poll numbers published in the newspaper ad do not mention the sample size of 408 likely voters. The ad also failed to mention the poll’s margin of error — plus or minus 3 percentage points. The media press release with the poll numbers was released by Richard Hardin, Hutchins’ campaign manager.
With the election only a couple of days away, Watts is firing back, taking to the airwaves to call the poll numbers untrue, and that the organization that allegedly released the poll doesn’t seem to exist with the Kentucky Secretary of State’s office.
“This is a very untrue and untrustworthy press release,” Watts said of the poll numbers. “The citizens of Nelson County deserve the truth.”
Watts told WBRT in an interview he believes voter turnout will exceed 50 percent, and that Nelson County voters will re-elect him to another four-year term.
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