In 2021, the campaign adviser for one of the losing candidates in the Florida State Primary Election warned the candidate that he would be facing a Gallup lawsuit if he did not do something about the polls showing him losing by a large margin. Gallup is an Insurance underwriter who specializes in statewide and national insurance sales. According to the campaign adviser, Gallup was told by the Insurance underwriters to “cuddle up” and “lay low.” He was told that if he did not “cuddle up”, Gallup would be “out of business” and that the “underwriters” would “do everything they could” to make sure that he did not lose. Gallup ignored the advice and even refused to take out ads in the newspaper that were designed to keep him in the public eye.

The story, Stricter Polls, made the rounds in the newspaper and on television. According to the story, it was a “concern” to the Insurance underwriter that Gallup did not have enough money to continue his campaign. Gallup, who had raised and spent a small fortune throughout the election, became “stricter” when it came to spending during the final days of the campaign. As the story implied, the “underwriters” had been quietly removing ads from the newspaper during this time so that they did not see how much support Gallup had, and they removed his name from all of the exit polls.

The problem with this story, as it appears, is that the story is entirely untrue. At no time did anyone from the Florida State Department or the Insurance Department tell Gallup to “cuddle up” or “lay low.” No such advice was offered to any of the officials who supervised the polls, and certainly no such advice was ever offered to any of the pollsters. It was also noted that no such “advice” was offered to any of the senior officials who failed to properly supervise the polls.

In fact, at the time of the lawsuit’s issuance, it was discovered that the Florida State Department had actually deleted all the records from the Florida Polling site that contained references to the Gallop lawsuit. Notwithstanding that fact, and despite all of the statements and evidence provided to the plaintiffs, the Florida State Department still claims to have deleted all of the Gallop recordings. That is why, on top of the fact that the Gallop lawsuit was finally found not to have any merit, the State Attorney General is attempting to force the State of Florida to restore all deleted recordings from the Florida Polling site. Now, this could be a very interesting decision, especially in light of the fact that the State Attorney General knows that the Gallop lawsuit was illegally ordered by the Florida Supreme Court on purely political grounds.

However, even if the State Attorney General has every right to try to force the Florida Supreme Court into court, the fact remains that Florida State should never have been in the position of having to resort to such obvious attempts to “smother” a politically-motivated litigation. It is unfortunate that the State Attorney General would resort to such tactics, especially after Gallop has received so much public support from not only the Florida Supreme Court, but also the entire legal community in Florida and across the nation. In fact, just days before the issuance of the Gallop lawsuit, the Florida Bar Association, led by David Nariman, sent a letter to the state’s high court asking it to reject the case on ‘frivolous and irrelevant’ grounds. In this letter, the Florida Bar Association demanded that the Florida State is barred from participating in any future proceedings related to the Gallop lawsuit. The Florida Bar Association also asked that any decisions related to the Gallop lawsuit be reviewed by the state’s supreme court.

The United States Justice Department also refused to intervene in the lawsuit, although there has been widespread criticism of the Justice Department for not standing up for its citizens’ rights to fair representation and due process. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, a Justice Department lawyer claimed that he had advised the Florida State Attorney General that they would not oppose the lawsuit, but that they would allow the lower courts to proceed according to their own wishes despite the objections raised by the State Attorney General. The United States Justice Department further stated that the Florida State Attorney General has the right to request an independent counsel to review the lawsuit. Apparently, the Justice Department has little to lose in this situation if it agrees to allow the Florida State to proceed with the lawsuit. Many legal professionals believe that the lack of support from the federal government and Florida’s Democratic State Attorney General for Gallop’s lawsuit is part of a larger pattern of partisan politics by the state’s top officials.