When it comes to Walmart’s urban strategy, we write more about the City of Chicago than any metropolitan area in the United States, with good reason. Walmart’s beachhead on Chicago’s south side is well established and the generals want to push inland.

Chicago Sixth Ward, and Pro-Walmart, Blogger JP Paulus thinks recent intelligence gathering operations may be part of the master plan.

I just got a robo-survey that seems to be from Wal-Mart, or Wal-Mart friendly politicians. (The questions were obviously slanted). This seems to be a brand new effort, as a quick Google search of news & blogs reveal nothing.

The survey included questions similar to the following [brackets reveal my own faulty memory] :

* What’s you opinion of Mayor Daley? (favorable, unfavorable, neutral or never heard of him)

* What’s you opinion of Ald. Lyle? (favorable, unfavorable, neutral or never heard of her)

* Would you favor a Wal-Mart at [either of the two main south side locations we mentioned in the last blog entry]?

* What’s your opinion of unions’ huge financial support of politicians? (it strongly affects politicians’ votes, it doesn’t affect votes, no opinion)

* Would voting against a Wal-Mart make vote against Ald. Lyle in the next election?

Did anyone else get such a call?

Just looking at the poll I’d say it’s more probable that Alderwoman Freddrenna M. Lyle’s likely opponents in the next election are polling to see if Walmart can be a wedge issue. The best way to check and see if Walmart is involved would be to pull the campaign finance reports for those politicians.

Progress Illinois, sponsored by Service Employees International Union Illinois State Council, spins the story out further.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 13th, 2009 at 1757 by Jeff Hess and is filed under Chicago. 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.