Someone's already conducting a poll about New Mexico's 2010 Democratic gubernatorial contest, asking questions about Lt. Gov. Diane Denish and actor Val Kilmer, who has said he's a potential candidate.

While it's not clear who commissioned the poll, one participant said the questions about Kilmer seemed harsher than those about Denish, who has made clear that she will seek the state's highest office.

Amanda Parker, an Albuquerque homemaker, said Thursday she received a call from a pollster this week who asked whether she plans to vote in the next Democratic primary — which is in June next year — as well as several questions about Denish and Kilmer.

Steve Fitzer, Denish's political director, said Denish didn't commission the poll. "No, we're not in the field," Fitzer said. "It's too close after the (legislative) session for us."

Neither Kilmer nor a third possible candidate — state Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez, D-Belen — could be reached for comment Thursday.

Term limits prevent Gov. Bill Richardson from running for a third four-year term next year.

Parker on Thursday described herself as a "Diane Denish fan" and said she thinks Kilmer is "silly." She said she's a registered Democrat who was "very involved" in last year's presidential race, first for Hillary Clinton, then for President Obama. Since the November general election, she said, she's been "burned out" on politics and hasn't given much thought to the 2010 gubernatorial race.

The questions about Denish seemed innocuous, Parker said. They had to do with issues such as health care and education, she said.

But with Kilmer — a political novice who has a ranch in San Miguel County — it was different, she said.

The pollster read some quotes from Kilmer about the environment and water policy. But then, she said, the pollster read some of Kilmer's controversial quotes from interviews with national magazines.

In 2003, Kilmer was quoted in Rolling Stone saying, "I live in the homicide capital of the Southwest. Eighty percent of the people in my county are drunk."

In 2005, Esquire quoted Kilmer saying he would do a better job than an actual veteran in portraying a Vietnam vet in a movie. "A guy who's lived through the horror of Vietnam has not spent his life preparing his mind for it. He's some punk. Most guys were borderline criminal or poor, and that's why they got sent to Vietnam. It was all the poor, wretched kids who got beat up by their dads, guys who didn't get on the football team, couldn't finagle a scholarship."

Both statements caused controversies. In both cases Kilmer has said he was misquoted in the magazines.

Besides those quotes, Parker said, the pollster asked about her attitudes toward the Christian Science religion. Several Web sites, including a 1999 article in Salon.com, say Kilmer is a Christian Scientist.

Parker said the pollster read a statement that Christian Scientists don't believe in medicine and believe that illnesses can be cured with prayer — which is an oversimplification. (The religion, for instance, doesn't forbid medical treatment.)

"They were trying to make him look like a freak," Parker said. She said she got the feeling that whoever was doing the poll was mainly trying to make Kilmer look bad.

She said there was one question about Sanchez. That one, she said, was whether she had a favorable, unfavorable or no opinion on Sanchez, who during the recent legislative session wouldn't say if he is running for governor.

Political blogger Joe Monahan of Albuquerque reported earlier this week about a poll that was "mainly testing Kilmer's negatives."

Albuquerque pollster Brian Sanderoff, after being told Parker's description of the questions, said Thursday he doubts if Kilmer would have commissioned it.

"It would take a brave candidate soul to do a poll that has only his own negative information," Sanderoff said.

Usually when a candidate wants to test his own weaknesses, Sanderoff said, the poll will have a "horse-race" question ("Which candidate would you vote for if the election were today?") followed by positive and negative information about the candidate who commissioned the poll, plus positive and negative information about the candidate's likely opponents.

Then, Sanderoff said, the "horse-race" question is asked again, to see what, if any, affect the negative information had.

Another type of poll, Sanderoff said, is the "push poll," in which negative information is given about the opponent, but not the candidate paying for the poll. Typically these polls are less concerned about the numbers than spreading the negative information about the opponent.

Contact Steve Terrell at 986-3037 or sterrell@sfnewmexican.com. Read his political blog at roundhouseroundup.com.