Supporters of presidential candidate Mitt Romney vehemently deny allegations that the former Massachusetts governor’s campaign planted Nathan Burd, the founder of “Americans for Mitt,” on an independent focus group that rated the most recent Republican debate. We picked up on the story and ran a post Thursday citing blogger Kevin Tracy, who has since pulled the post from his Website.
And in a message left earlier on our story’s comment thread, Burd said Tracy’s article was false.
Yes, this is a hoax. I’m Nathan Burd. I watched the debate and the focus group at home in Columbus, Ohio. The entire focus group session is on You Tube. Look it up, I’m not there and there was no interview.
I have no idea who started this story, although I’ve been told it appeared on Thompson and Huckabee blogs. Most sites have removed this story and/or printed an apology. I hope you’ll do the same. [NATHAN BURD]
So apparently, Burd was never a part of the focus group was not placed on the group to skew support in Romney’s favor.
This entry was posted on Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 12:47 pm and is filed under Primary Season, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
After someone left a comment on my blog regarding this story, I wrote an article about it. Having watched the post debate focus group, I had mistaken the picture of Burd and Romney for someone I had seen the previous day.
I retracted the post as soon as I found the clip of the event on YouTube. I’ll be issuing a formal apology either later tonight or early tomorrow morning.
However, the focus group was largely in favor or Romney and by many accounts, his performance wasn’t one of his best. Huckabee had virtually no supporters in the room… which is odd since the state is 40% for Huckabee.
After the YouTube debate, which independent focus groups from across the country went overwhelmingly to Huckabee, the Luntz group showed again an overwhelming split between Romney and Thompson. Although Romney placed 2nd and 3rd in most of those independent groups, Thompson placed nearly last.
This follows a pattern of suspicious behavior following the FRC straw poll.
LOL, It’s great that the title of your “apology” is a question. You’ve been spreading malicious rumors about another candidate, and you don’t have the courage to admit that you were wrong.
The title is simply, “A Formal Apology” - no question. Although I still doubt the innocence of Romney and Thompson, what I wrote was false and my apology is for that. Greer, you don’t have to accept it, but I spoke with Nathan Burd and he has.
Kevin,
I think he was talking to me. And the reason this post’s title is in question form is because the previous post it is correcting was in question form.
Plus, Greer, I never made a claim that anyone was doing anything. I simply covered Kevin Tracy’s claim. Now go pop another Xanax and finish your bag of Cheetos so the other Romney trolls have room to comment.
Zinggggg!!!!!one!!!uno~!1
[...] Romney NOT rigging focus groups? Romney rigging focus groups? By Adam | December 13, 2007 - 5:04 pm - Posted in Primary Season, Republicans [...]
I don’t think Mitt Romney is rigging the focus groups. He doesn’t have to, Fox does it for him.