But the part of the polling information that was not released shows how Workman's own actions continue to damage her cause.

The poll results released by the Workman campaign seemed to indicate she was catching up to Democrat Peter Corroon after hitting a low point in the wake of felony charges that she misused public funds. The poll was conducted during the week of Sept. 20 amid an advertising blitz by the Workman campaign that strongly implied the charges were politically motivated because District Attorney David Yocom was a Democrat.

The first few days of the poll had Workman at 29 percent - a 17-point jump from the 12 percent nadir she had clung to just two weeks earlier. But on Wednesday, Sept. 22, Workman walked out of a live radio interview with KUER's Doug Fabrizio because she didn't like his questions.

After she bolted, Fabrizio took several calls from listeners expressing outrage that the mayor had walked out. Television and radio stations aired stories about the walkout that day and Salt Lake City's two daily newspapers detailed the incident the following day.

After that, as the GOP polling continued, Workman's numbers plunged to 23 percent. Her free fall apparently is accelerating. A Salt Lake Tribune poll published Friday based on telephone surveys last week shows Workman's popularity at 15 percent, compared to Corroon's 41 percent and independent Merrill Cook's 21 percent.

The unfortunate message for the politicians, though, is that the ads obfuscating the core issues and spinning the discussion into allegations of a political prosecution by Yocom were working. They were part of a master plan put together by Workman's image handlers which began with leaks to the press about the investigation followed by a press conference with Republican supporters painting Workman as a victim. Then came the frequent television and radio ads showing ordinary citizens parroting the "it's all politics" refrain.

The tactic may be effective, but it warps the political process. It could have been taken straight out of Karl Rove's playbook.

Bush's Brain, the book by James Moore and Wayne Slater, details Rove's career as a successful Republican strategist and Bush administration insider. The authors praise Rove's political genius while probing his reputation as a manipulator and spinner who leaves political casualties in his wake. The book implies Rove has changed the national political landscape, and not for the better.

One chapter focuses on criminal charges filed in 1993 against Texas' newly elected U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican and a Rove client. The charges alleged Hutchison illegally used her employees when she was state treasurer to campaign fund-raise on state time and used a state computer to monitor political contributions.

Immediately, wrote Moore and Slater, the Republican Party "launched an assault on District Attorney Ronnie Earle's credibility, orchestrated by Rove." Republicans and Hutchison's attorneys alleged the district attorney was prosecuting Hutchinson for political purposes, a nearly identical claim made by Workman's supporters and attorneys in the current case.

Rove, a former Utahn and past campaign consultant to Sen. Orrin Hatch and former Gov. Norm Bangerter, testified in court that reporters had been alerted in advance that there would be a raid on the treasurer's office to secure records that would damn Hutchinson. But the authors say that based on their interviews with the reporters, none was notified in advance.

The charges against Hutchinson eventually were dropped.

Rove's strategy in Texas and the tactics in the Workman campaign seem to similarly use deflection and spin to divert attention from the facts and to a straw villain of the opposite political party. The Workman team brought in top Republican strategist Eddie Mahe to advise them on damage control when a flurry of county government scandals this year began to undermine Workman's popularity. Mahe, who has been a consultant for former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt and ex-Congresswoman Enid Greene, seems cut from the same political cloth as Rove. But Rove's client was elected to the U.S. Senate and Mahe's appears to be headed back to the private sector.