Rochester Business Journal poll on Maggie Brooks fear campaign
The Rochester Business Journal ran a poll on the Brooks-Minarik plan to strip the Rochester Public Library of funds. The results surprised me, since it was a reader’s poll and I would guess that the vast majority of RBJ’s readers is white, suburban, Republicans; I would have suspected overwhelming support for the Brooks-Minarik “plan”, but there isn’t:
Do you support Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks’ threat to stop all county funding of the Central Library unless it acts immediately to “halt the public viewing of pornography and other graphic materials†on computers at the library?
Yes 52%
No 48%
Poll conducted 4/16 – 4/17/07
Remember: people who read the RBJ are the very kind of voters Maggie is counting on in November. If she’s not getting much support on this from then, this issue is a big fat loser for the Brooks-Minarik fear machine.
Here’s some responses:
Her position is strictly to play to her base and will run into conflict with federal regulations. This a case of her trying to distract people from the real issues in Monroe County of taxes, education, job losses, and creating effective government to address these problems.
—Craig EppersonThe Library should pay heed to the laws of the land and listen to its patrons, not to personal whims and knee-jerk dictator-style censorship. If the county halts funding, the library will close and it will be just another reason for people to leave the area.
—Richard Stevenson, CEO, CobbleSoft International
Wow! I guess we’re not the only ones who see this for what it is.
Honestly, I would suspect that the readership of the RBJ is more educated than the people that Maggie is really counting on for her campaign.
@Mark: education really has very little to do with politics in terms of whether one trends right or left.
There’s a truly fascinating study along these lines. With women, the more educated they are, the more liberal they are, whereas men with postgraduate studies such as law, business, and medicine are more conservative than men without them.
I will say, as an academic, that people with Ph.D’s in arts and sciences are overwhelmingly Democratic. But that’s a tiny fraction of people with postgraduate education and certainly only make up a tiny proportion — if any at all — of the RBJ readership.
I don’t doubt that myself as I have come across a wide range of both left and right in my schooling, but my point being that on this particular issue I can’t fathom any highly educated individual buying into Maggie’s BS.
BTW, there is a parallel discussion of this over at my blog. The point I’m making (and I think it’s the same as yours, Exile) is that even voluntary respondents of a Conservative stripe don’t seem in favour of this smear.
[...] the D&C editorial board deserves condemnation for its focus on silly, divisive issues like internet filters in libraries and the Pledge of Allegiance in schools; nationally, David Broder, Tom Friedman, and the rest of [...]