Yesterday PHXated noted that the Arizona Republic, in keeping with its feeling that its terrestrial readers don’t want to be bothered with uncomfortable news about Little Benny Quayle, did not include, in its printed edition, a report of a fairly notable poll on the Quayle-Hulburd race.

It said that Quayle was actually trailing Hulburd, 46 to 44, and that his unfavorables were at 52 percent.

While it’s possible the poll was what the big-time analysts call an “outlier,” some of its other findings—support for John McCain and such—were in keeping with the distric’s conservative makeup.

Anyway, the Republic was in a quandary: Having played down as much as possible the previous bad news for Quayle—mostly stemming from his unsavory association with a skanky web site when he could have, you know, been involved in any sort of public service that might make him qualified to go to Congress—it was even more difficult for the paper to write about a poll that showed a big chunk of the electorate was turning up it nose at the candidate, plainly based on the information the paper hadn’t wanted to get out.

Fortunately, Laurie Roberts, a columnist in the local news section, comes through again. It was she who, after the Republican primary was over, told people about Quayle and DirtyScottsdale.com.

Now she’s again columnizing about news that the paper itself has never vouchsafed to readers:

The poll, by Democratic pollster Public Policy Polling, surveyed 655 likely voters and had a margin of error of 3.8 percent. It showed Hulburd and Quayle in a dead heat with 10 percent undecided.

While both men were viewed favorably by a third of those polled, Quayle was disliked by 52 percent, including half of the independents surveyed. Hulburd, meanwhile, was disliked by 20 percent all voters surveyed, with 47 percent unsure what to think.

Interestingly, Roberts cites some evidence of a contention by New Times' James King … basically, not only that Quayle never lied about his involvement in Dirty Scottsdale, but that Politico, the online political magazine, is backing away from its initial contention that he did:

In a recent profile, Politico wrote that Quayle “has always admitted to writing some posts under a pseudonym”. That’s a far cry from its August story, headlined “Ben Quayle changes story about Dirty Scottsdale website”.

[Quayle campaign manager] Heiler says Quayle was responding to questions about whether he was involved in founding the website. The reporter, he said, never directly asked whether he had written for the site.

PHXated’s not buying it, for reasons delineated in the James King post but will look into the question of whether Politico itself is now downplaying what it once trumpeted.