The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 24

68 City Region The Boston Globe TUESDAY, MARCH 7, 2006 UMass pollster worked on side as a political consultant 'It's hairy; there's no question about it. You're working at a public university, and when you poll on basically your bosses, OK, you get Louis C. DiNatale, pollster the former director of The (Newark) Star-LedgerEagleton-RutgersPoll. "That's an extremely messy situation," Zukin said, asserting that pollsters "have a public obligation to avoid the appearance of impropriety" Asked to respond, DiNatale said last week: "It's messy, but it is not illegal or unethical. "I can do anything I want in my private time.

I can do all this stuff, OK?" Moreover, DiNatale asserted that he has provided at least as much unpaid advice to the Democratic gubernatorial candidates, Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly and Deval Patrick, as he has given to Mihos. The oft-quoted DiNatale doubles as UMass-Lowell's director of the Center for Economic and Civic Opinion and its executive director of public affairs. He moved to the Lowell campus in July 2004, after spending 20 years at UMass-Boston, where he split his time doing polling, research, and teaching at the McCormack Institute and working in the UMass president's office. The results of his UMass poll, launched in 1996, have frequently been published in the Globe.

DiNatale's sideline is particularly thorny, because he works at a public university, currently at a salary of $154,500. UMass relies on tax dollars appropriated by politicians he advises. "It's hairy; there's no question about it," DiNatale said in an interview. "You're working at a public university, and when you poll on basically your bosses, OK, you get expletive." DiNatale's expansive sideline had not been generally known in the state's tightknit political himself in the 2000 Senate election of Harriette L. Chandler, Democrat of Worcester.

DiNatale was also paid at least $11,000, through another company, for work on a 2001 fluoride referendum campaign in Worcester. DiNatale's name does not appear on public campaign finance records, however; he is paid through other consulting companies, including Winning Choices, one of several businesses owned by Paul J. Giorgio of Worcester, operating out of a storefront on Winter Street in an industrial section of Worcester. Since 2002, Winning Choices has been paid $219,000 by a half-dozen candidates and a statewide referendum committee, state campaign finance records show. DiNatale, who lives in Lancaster, said he was paid on occasion by Giorgio, another longtime friend, for work on local races in the Worcester area.

DiNatale and Giorgio bought the former Atlantic Bag Co. building on Winter Street in 2002 for $225,000 and have renovated it. SPQR, "an Italian Caffe" owned by Giorgio and DiNatale's wife, Gail Sullivan, is also located there. Last month, under the name Winning Choices, DiNatale conducted a poll of 315 Western Massachusetts voters for Fairness for Good Drivers, a coalition of insurance companies engaged in a multimillion-dollar lobbying effort to loosen the state's rate-setting role in auto insurance. DiNatale also briefed Senator Andrea F.

Nuciforo Senate chairman of the Joint Committee on Financial Services, on the poll results. "Yes, I brought it to Nuciforo," DiNatale said. "They asked me because they knew I was an honest broker." check when we were billed, and that was it." DiNatale said Hock charged Mihos "around eight grand" for the survey conducted last Sept. 25-29, about a month after Hock joined UMass-Lowell as associate director of the Center for Economic and Civic Opinion. Hock and DiNatale have been friends for 30 years and, until a few years ago, operated a polling business together, DiNatale said.

Hock now operates Hock Research out of his unit in a Needham apartment complex. In September, DiNatale steered the Committee for a Democratic Senate, Travaglini's political action committee, to hire Hock. "I forget what the issue was. It might have been healthcare; it might have been something else," DiNatale said. For the poll, the PAC paid Hock $8,000 Sept.

19, shortly after he went on the UMass-Lowell payroll at a salary of $85,000. Asked about the propriety of hiring a public employee to poll for Travaglini's use, the PAC's treasurer, attorney Thomas R. Ki-ley, said: "Public employees get to have second jobs" under the state's conflict-of-interest law. "I assume they have the brains to do things right," he said. Hock did not return calls from the Globe, but DiNatale said his aide's polling is done "on his private time, in his own way, totally separate from the university in every way." DiNatale said his own moonlighting is done on nights and weekends, using personal phones and computer equipment.

Since 2000, Hock and his company have billed about $330,000 to candidates, a referendum campaign, and Travaglini's PAC. Most of the money was passed through to pay other vendors, DiNatale said, including "five or $10,000" to who are convinced that because I'm a Democrat, I advised Christy Mihos to run as an independent." DiNatale said he gave a report last fall to Mihos and to some Mihos advisers that concluded, based on Hock's poll, that Mihos was "not viable" in either a Republican primary against Healey or as an independent. But a copy of the poll and DiNatale's analysis contradict that account. The analysis, obtained by the Globe, gave no assessment of Mihos's strength as an independent, rated Healey "a weak candidate with potential problems" in a GOP primary, and recommended that Mihos spend $200,000 on direct-mail contact to Republican voters between last October and Jan. 1.

Mihos, who describes DiNatale as a friend, said he has never met Hock. "My sense is I've talked to him," Mihos said. "I sent him a community. On Feb. 19, the Globe reported DiNatale's advisory role in a profile of Mihos, who at the time was deciding whether to run as a GOP candidate or as an independent.

Three days earlier, the newspaper had published a University of Mas-sachusetts gubernatorial poll, overseen by DiNatale and Hock, that included Mihos. That February UMass survey, DiNatale said, generated complaints from Reilly and from Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, a Republican and also a candidate for governor, and from Senate President Robert E. Travaglini. Healey's campaign specifically criticized DiNatale's advisory role with Mihos. The Mihos relationship, DiNatale acknowledged, left him "vulnerable to appearance arguments, but there is nothing inherently wrong with it, and this issue is being driven by Republicans William Bulger, the former state Senate president, left his post as university president in September 2003 amid controversy over the federal probe into the disappearance of Whitey Bulger.

Yesterday Cahill brushed aside arguments made in the past by defenders of the Bulger brothers that the treasurer had sought to gain political mileage by fighting two men who have been demonized for their ties to Whitey Bulger. "This case was never about the last name of the person involved, but rather ensuring that everyone plays by the same rules," Cahill said in a statement after the court ruled on John Bulger's pension. Bulger was receiving an annual pension of $65,353. As a result of POLLSTER Continued from Page A 1 private survey work." Sperounis added, "The university does not see any legal or ethical issues associated with Mr. DiNatale's work, but will review all the issues raised and will take appropriate action if warranted." In an interview last week, Di-Natale insisted that there was nothing improper about his outside work and that there is no evidence he altered poll results.

His extracurricular activities are wide-ranging, extending to an unusual relationship with Christy P. Mihos, now an independent candidate for governor. Asked about his outside work, DiNatale conceded in an interview that last fall he persuaded Mihos, then a prospective candidate, to hire Barry Hock, DiNatale's former business partner and currently his chief aide at UMass-Lowell, to conduct a poll privately. DiNatale said he then analyzed the results and made recommendations to Mihos, who recently decided to abandon the Republican Party for an independent candidacy. DiNatale said that he was never paid by Mihos, with whom he met several times, and that he "got dis-involved, once he decided to become a candidate." But the private polling followed by the public, UMass-Lowell survey in February that included Mihos crossed a professional line for pollsters, a leading industry figure said.

"It's on its face a conflict of interest if you're doing private polling for a candidate where you're also doing public polling on the race," said Cliff Zukin, president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research. Zukin, a Rutgers University professor, is SJC rules BULGER Continued from Page Bl yesterday. Bulger, 68, who is known as "Jackie," could not be reached for comment. He pleaded guilty in 2003 to two counts of perjury and two counts of obstruction of justice and was sentenced to six months in federal prison. Federal authorities said he falsely testified that he had no knowledge of a safe deposit box controlled by Whitey Bulger and that he had had no contact with him.

Whitey Bulger fled Massachusetts to evade a January 1995 federal racketeering indictment and is wanted in the slayings of 19 people. He is on the FBI's list of 10 most wanted fugitives. Open Sunday ALL NEW 2006 Heated and Cooled Front Seats, 17" Alloy Wheels, Wood Trim Accent Dual Zone Electronic Buy For or Bulger brother forfeited pension I Ml i John P. Bulger is a former Boston Juvenile Court Clerk-Magistrate. the ruling, the state Retirement Board is expected to require him to return $243,071 that he has re ceived since his retirement, according to Neil Morrison, the state's first deputy treasurer.

The board could take up the matter as early as its March 30 meeting. The focus of the pension dispute was a statute that bars anyone from receiving the benefit after being convicted of a crime involving "laws applicable to his office or position." Bulger's lawyer, Hynes, had argued to the Supreme Judicial Court that his client's felony convictions, while regrettable, stemmed from a "personal matter" that had nothing to do with his official duties as clerk-magistrate. But the court, in a decision Product in the 62106 Yesterday's ruling is the second significant court decision in three months in a dispute over the pension of a brother of Whitey Bulger. In November, former University of Massachusetts president William M. Bulger won a major victory in his battle to boost his pension when a Superior Court judge ruled that the state must include in its calculations his housing allowance and part of his annuity.

The decision increased the annual pension by about $29,000, to an estimated $208,000. Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly is appealing that ruling on behalf of the Retirement Board to the state Appeals Court and plans to file his brief on March 14. 12PM 5PM 60282, 62143 LINCOLN ZEPHYR 6 Disc CD wMP3, leather, Dual Power Seats wLumbar, Climate Control, Remote Keyless Entry wKeypad Lease For 24 21,000 mile ted caipet lease SO due at per mo. Additional miles, 24 mos.

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