And there’s more! Back in April 2000, two of candidate Michael Ferguson’s opponents in the Republican primary in 
New Jersey’s Seventh Congressional District accused Ferguson of waging a push-polling campaign after challenging them to take a clean campaign pledge. Ferguson’s campaign polls were done by Arthur Finkelstein and Diversified Research, like those currently being done in South Dakota. More interesting is a beautiful moment from the early history of push-polling back in 1978 when future South Carolina Governor Carroll Campbell beat out Max Heller for a seat in Congress. Let’s pick the story up from a 1996 report published by the National Jewish Democratic Council …
That race pitted Republican Carroll Campbell against Democrat Max Heller. According to press accounts, Campbell commissioned a poll, conducted by the notorious GOP pollster Arthur Finkelstein, in which voters were asked their views of Campbell, who was described as “a native South Carolinian,” and Heller, who was described as “a Jewish immigrant.” The Campbell-Finkelstein poll also asked voters whether they approved or disapproved of U.S. aid to Israel, hardly a significant issue in the campaign except that it injected Heller’s religion into the race and implied that, as a Jew, he would favor Israel over the U.S. Then just five days before the election, an independent candidate attacked Heller because Heller did not “believe in Jesus Christ.” Heller lost by less than 6,000 votes. Years after the election it was revealed that there had been contact between the independent candidate and the Campbell campaign, leading some observers to believe that the independent candidate had entered the race at the behest of the Campbell campaign.
Why would Finkelstein, a Jew, participate in using anti-Semitism as a political tool? Well, some folks just don’t let personal matters get in the way of doing a good job.
