N.H. probe targets poll on Romney

New Hampshire’s attorney general launched an investigation Friday of a polling operation that allegedly spread negative information about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his Mormon faith.

Romney and GOP rival John McCain each called for the criminal investigation after the Associated Press ran an article about a survey of New Hampshire voters that was conducted this week. According to some of those called, survey takers asked whether aspects of Romney’s religious beliefs would bother voters, including the church’s pre-1970s ban on African Americans serving as bishops. Respondents were also asked about Romney’s lack of military service during the Vietnam War.

“Whichever campaign is engaging in this type of awful religious bigotry as a line of political attack, it is repulsive and, to put it bluntly, un-American,” said Matt Rhoades, communications director of the Romney campaign.

Anne Baker, 59, an independent voter who lives in Hollis, N.H., said she answered survey questions on Wednesday. Among other things, Baker recalled, the pollster said that the Mormon Church had barred blacks from becoming bishops until the 1970s and that Romney avoided military service in Vietnam because he was doing missionary work in France. She said she was asked whether such facts would make her more or less likely to vote for the former Massachusetts governor.

“I finally got a little bit upset because it was totally negative stuff,” said Baker, a Romney supporter. “She wasn’t asking my opinion. She was trying to get me to form an opinion.”

New Hampshire law requires that campaign pollsters who ask questions about an opposition candidate must identify who they are working for and against.

But the sponsors insisted on anonymity, according to Baker and Dona Pierce, a Nashua voter and retired real estate agent who took the survey Thursday.

Pierce, a Republican, said the pollster also asked about Romney’s raising taxes as governor of Massachusetts, supporting former Sen. Paul Tsongas (D-Mass.) for president in 1992 and flip-flopping on issues.

Spokesmen for Republican White House contenders McCain, former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson each said their campaigns had nothing to do with the survey.

The poll included flattering questions about McCain and his history as a Navy pilot in Vietnam, Pierce said.

McCain, in a statement, said he was “outraged by the cowardly telephone calls that hide behind my name in an effort to disparage one candidate and advance the candidacy of another.

“I was a target of these same tactics in South Carolina in 2000 and believe the American people deserve better from those who seek the high office of the presidency,” the Arizona senator said.

In a letter to New Hampshire Deputy Atty. Gen. Bud Fitch, the McCain campaign called for an investigation of what it called a “push poll.” Fitch said his office was investigating whether the apparent failure to disclose the poll’s sponsor violated state law.

But it was unclear whether the survey met the commonly used definition of a push poll: a brief questionnaire designed to plant negative information about a candidate rather than gather information.

Nancy Mathiowetz, president of the American Assn. for Public Opinion Research, said the questions about Romney sounded more like a “message-testing” survey by a campaign or group trying to gauge the potency of potential attacks on Romney.

Baker, one of those surveyed, said the pollster told her that she was working for Western Wats, a Utah data-collection firm, but would not name its client.

Robert Maccabee, director of client services at Western Wats, said he would not comment “on a project that we may have been involved in.” The company never does push polling, he said, but sometimes does message testing.

Romney is not alone among White House contenders facing questions about religion.

A whisper campaign identifying Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) as a closet Muslim has been circulating for months online -- with biting, often crude e-mails reaching pastors, political consultants and voters. A typical e-mail says that Obama was enrolled in a radical Muslim school during his childhood in Indonesia and that Obama’s Christianity is a cover.

Obama and pastors who know him have rejected the assertions. At a recent Iowa forum, the senator alluded to rumors that “I am a Muslim plant who’s taking over America” and added: “This would come as a surprise to my pastor at Trinity Baptist Church.”

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michael.finnegan@latimes.com

Times staff writer Stephanie Simon contributed to this report.