Did Sam Sullivan supporters commission mystery polling to prove Mayor still electable?

The mystery polling on Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan may not be a mystery anymore....

My colleague Sean Holman at 24 hours and proprietor of the must-read www.publiceyeonline.com has posted a report of a major meeting of Sam Sullivan's supporters.

The Mayor's men and women got together at the Opus Hotel Wednesday night before attending a special screening of the controversial documentary Citizen Sam - a blunt look at Sam Sullivan and his Non-Partisan Association 2005 election campaign.

Would those be some of the same people who commissioned a mystery poll by Justason Market Intelligence about Sam Sullivan, his potential opponents and his policies?

More than likely.

That secret polling - reported exclusively in 24 hours - sparked widespread rumours among city politics players and observers as to who was responsible.

But as of Wednesday you could scratch all of the following off the list of suspects, who have contacted me since the story broke:

Christy Clark - ex-Deputy Premier who challenged Sullivan for the NPA mayoralty nomination.

Marty Zlotnick - NPA Park Board commissioner and backroom guy who backed Clark

Tim Louis - ex-Coalition of Progressive Electors councilor

David Cadman - COPE councilor

Peter Ladner - NPA councilor

Suzanne Anton - NPA councilor

The NPA

Vision Vancouver

COPE

That tends to lead to one obvious conclusion - Sullivan's backers, feeling the heat over the Mayor's failing performance, commissioned a poll to show he is still viable and could win an election over either Vision Vancouver's Raymond Louie, COPE's Cadman or Louis or former opponent Jim Green of Vision.

The question now is whether the poll results were so good that they will soon appear in media outlets to back up Sullivan or whether they were so bad that we will never seen them.

Unless they get leaked!