What about the press and politicians?

The Big Picture
by Glynn Wilson

As the 2010 election season gears up around the country and in the state, as a trained and credentialed public opinion researcher as well as a journalist who has covered public opinion research for about 30 years, I am always looking to see what the data shows versus what political candidates and the media are spending time talking about.

Economic development is always the number one issue to the press in Alabama and politicians running for office here, a fact that is left over from the post-Civil War industrialization as our society moved away from an agricultural society to a manufacturing society. Of course in the years following the Civil War, we called the businessmen who came South “Yankee carpet-baggers,” but over the years, their reputations became less sullied as they provided jobs for an increasing number of citizens, many of whom moved off the farms to the cities.

And in these economic times, when the nation and the state are still suffering from the results of the Bush recession that started in 2007 even though we didn’t find out about it from the media until January 2008, the economy is still the number one concern of voters, according to the Gallup Poll and other research.

Twenty-nine percent of the American public name the economy in general as the number one problem facing the country. Second to that is health care, however. Twenty-six percent of the people say health care is the number one concern, while 15 percent name unemployment.

Other studies show a high correlation between issues being covered prominently by the media and issues identified by the public to be important.

While the environment only polls from one to three percent on the number one problem question, when asked about their personal worries on environmental problems facing the country at this time, the public overwhelming names polluted water as number one.

According to Gallup, a majority of Americans say they worry “a great deal” about four different environment problems involving water: 58 percent are concerned about pollution of drinking water, 53 percent worry about pollution of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs, 52 percent express concern about contamination of soil and water by toxic waste, and 51 percent worry “a great deal” about the maintenance of the nation’s supply of fresh water.

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Agricultural Commissioner Ron Sparks, the Fort Payne Democrat running for governor, came out swinging on the gambling issue this week against Gov. Bob Riley, and his opponent in the Democratic Party primary, Rep. Artur Davis.

Sparks said in a press release he recently ask governor Riley if he were going to stop the people of Alabama from crossing the state line into Mississippi to gamble. Then the Commander of the Governor’s Task Force on Illegal Gambling, David Barber, resigned, admitting he won thousands of dollars gambling at a Mississippi casino.

“This just proves the hypocrisy of those who want to kill Alabama jobs and rob our children and seniors of important revenue. We have a Governor who takes Mississippi gambling money while his anti-gambling czar gambles in Mississippi,” Sparks said. “David Barber takes his Alabama money and goes to Mississippi to help educate Mississippi children and help create jobs for Mississippi workers. That money needs to stay in Alabama and help us, not them.”

Sparks pledged if the people of the state elect him governor, he will bring an education lottery to Alabama, protect Alabama jobs, and finally make gaming pay its fair share of taxes.

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