Countdown

Home > Interviews > Bill Carrick

Bill Carrick

Bill Carrick is a Democratic strategist and media consultant. He worked on the presidential campaigns of Bill Clinton, Edward M. Kennedy and Richard A. Gephardt and was Gephardt’s campaign manager for his 1988 run. He is now a partner at Morris & Carrick, a national media consulting firm, and is based in Los Angeles.

Sara Fritz interviewed Bill Carrick by telephone on February 16, 2007.

Now, your last race was the mayor?

The last campaign I did? I did the governor’s race in California, [Phil] Angelides, and Senator [Dianne] Feinstein’s re-election.

It was on the Feinstein campaign, the first one, that I met you, [when] she was running against Pete Wilson.

Yeah.

And I know you did Gephardt.

Yeah. I worked on his campaign in ’04.

And have you done others?

I worked on both of the Clinton campaigns and [for] Gephardt. I was the campaign manager for Gephardt in ’88. And then I worked for Senator Kennedy when he ran in ’80.

It’s clear that you get pulled into these things pretty quickly. And so my first question is, do you expect to play some part in the presidential race this year?

I guess my attitude is like, you know, if possible. I’m not frothing at the mouth to get involved. And there would have to be something that was serious and significant. I just don’t want to do one to do one.

There do seem to be a multiplicity of opportunities these days.

Yeah, there are plenty of candidates out there, that’s for sure.
Have you heard from various [candidates]?

Yeah. I’ve talked to various people, nothing very seriously at this point. I think most of the campaigns to date are focused on fundraising and getting up and running in Iowa and New Hampshire and then whatever rollout they are doing.

Have you ever done Nevada?

I have never done a campaign in Nevada. I have come close. And I actually had a potential client there who was going to run for Senate and didn’t run. But I have never done Nevada. I grew up in South Carolina. I have done a lot of stuff there. And, of course, I have been through Iowa and New Hampshire several times.

Have you lived in California for most of that?

No. I grew up in South Carolina.

You got into politics there?

I got into politics there, did volunteer work when I was in college, and then went on and worked for the state party and worked in some campaigns there. And then I ended up in Senator Kennedy’s campaign in 1980. Then I went to work for him in Washington and stayed with him until I went to run the Gephardt campaign in ’87. And then after that I moved to California, in the spring.

The truth is I was a little worn out from Washington. So I took a job for a couple of years in the entertainment business and then ended up back in politics.

I assume, from your perspective, that working on California races is more lucrative than doing something in a presidential race.

My general sense of the economics of all of this is that presidential campaigns don’t tend to be all that lucrative. They are clearly a different kind of experience than doing normal political consulting, or the normal sort of media advertising work I do. It’s just a different dynamic. And they are much more complex and much more engaged in political organizing, and time-consuming. And the level of media coverage and exposure is so much more intense that it’s just a whole different world.

I would assume that it’s kind of like covering the White House for a reporter. It kind of stamps your ticket now and then.

Oh, yeah, definitely. Just in terms of sheer challenge and being in the very pinnacle of what you want to do politically is, as an organizer, or operative, consultant, whatever, there is nothing like it. And it’s extremely seductive. I mean people, as you know, come back and do it over and over and over again.

Do you run a firm of a number of people?

Yes, I have a firm. I have a partner. I am in L.A.; Hank Morris, he’s in New York. And we have employees.

Do you do corporate or other clients besides political clients?

From time to time we have done a little bit of crisis-management stuff, but nothing very significant. I would say 90 percent of our clients are politics.

A lot of consultants use the nonpolitical to subsidize the political sometimes.

Yeah, definitely there are a lot of people who are — and, of course, [there’s] the media consolidation business. A lot of these people have all been bought up by larger conglomerates.

Tell me about your experience in the Gephardt campaign. How did you get involved? What did you do? How long did it last?

The first time around?

Yeah. Well, so you did it twice?

I did it in ’88 and ’04. I was the manager in ’88, and in ’04 I was the media consultant.

Well, tell me about both of them.

Well, [in] ’88, after Senator Kennedy decided he wasn’t going to run for president, I started talking to various campaigns and candidates. And after doing that for a while, I decided that I liked Dick Gephardt best, personally, and I wasn’t quite sure what his opportunities were. But I thought he was smart and talented and had potential. So I signed on, and ended up being the campaign manager. And it was a very interesting experience.

Was that the first time you were a manager?

Yeah. That’s the first time I had been a manager of a presidential campaign. I had managed other campaigns, but [that was the] first presidential.

When was it when you went to work for him? In ’87, you said?

Eighty-seven.

What kind of agreement did you have with him? Was there a written contract? And what was it all about? What was the conversation about?

I don’t remember whether we had a contract in writing or not. We might have. We basically just settled on a salary and essentially what the lines of authority would be in terms of what I would be in charge of. It wasn’t very complicated. He had some people who were working politically for him; he had a political action committee, that kind of stuff. And he had people in his congressional office. But I was fully in charge. And we had begun assembling a campaign when I got there.

How big did the campaign organization eventually get?

Pretty large. We had a lot of people working in fundraising, scheduling press, all who were in the national headquarters.

Was your headquarters in Washington or St. Louis?

Washington. And we had a significant operation in St. Louis. And then we had people in Iowa and New Hampshire and in several other early states.

Talk about the fundraising piece of it. As I recall, I don’t know which Gephardt campaign I recall this from, but he was always kind of worried about money.

Well, the ’88 campaign, of course, was pre-Internet. So the opportunity to raise money was very much a matter of networking and contacts and recruiting people who could help you raise money, who could host fundraisers. It was a very person-to-person kind of work.

Did it require the candidate at all times?

Yeah. He had to do a lot of that. Now, Terry McAuliffe — the legendary Terry McAuliffe — was the finance chairman of the campaign. And so he did quite a bit of it. I mean, he organized it. He recruited the fundraising staff. He established the fundraising goals and recruited a lot of civilians to do fundraising events and things for the campaign.

In terms of other consultants, I don’t know if Terry was just a volunteer —

He was a volunteer.

What other kinds of consultants did you hire?

We had the firm of Doak & Shrum. They later split up.

Both [David Doak and Bob Shrum] were involved extensively, as well as a couple of their then-employees, which included Steve McMahon, who has his own firm now and was very active in Dean’s campaign last time. And Jon Macks, who is now one of the writers on The Tonight Show for Jay Leno, was working for them then. And they were both very actively involved. And Joe Trippi, who had been an employee of theirs, had gone to work for Gary Hart. And when Gary dropped out, Joe came to work for us.

Bob Shrum has been maligned a lot as a person who has really soaked campaigns. Do you think the campaign got value out of the consultants it hired?

It definitely got value out of them. I think Bob and David did not make much money on the Gephardt campaign. In fact, I think they had a carryover debt that lingered for some time. So they did not soak anybody. And they were probably more in the line of “soakee” than soaker, in that instance. And Ed Reilly, who was doing the polling, I think he ended up with a carryover debt.

I think the Gephardt campaign had a difficult time putting together the money and doing the post-Iowa, New Hampshire stuff. Because that year we had Super Tuesday set up, which is sort of being reconstructed with different geography this time, on February 5. But anyway, that was almost prohibitively expensive — to do a campaign the same day in Texas, and Florida, and Alabama, and Mississippi, and Oklahoma, and Georgia, and Missouri, and Washington, and Massachusetts, and Maryland, and Virginia, and North Carolina. It was jus too awesome a task to even think about financially. So that campaign, nobody made money. And I suspect almost all of the principals probably lost money.

What did you learn from that campaign?

The biggest thing I learned about that presidential campaign, and when you are doing it close-up, is that the calendar really drives presidential politics in a way that is totally different from any other kind of political experience. Then Iowa, New Hampshire, and now this time Nevada, South Carolina; I mean, the early campaign tends to focus in those early states. And the momentum that is generated out of that really is the strongest dynamic in presidential politics. And the calendar is king in presidential politics. Now, I haven’t had any experience since then that has dissuaded me that that’s not the case.

Gephardt had a lot of labor support. So he had people to work for him as well, right?

You know, the first go-around we had quite a few labor supporters, but there was no formal AFL-CIO endorsement. So it was essentially on the local level. Back in ’88, the United Auto Workers were a big deal in Iowa. And they were a big help to us, as were some other unions. In ’04 he had a lot more formal union support.

Everyone says that every four years it is written that the unions’ support is really the key for turning out people. But it never seems to be the key for winning. What’s your feeling about that?

Well, first of all, I think you’ve got to have a candidate who really resonates with the rank-and-file labor members. And if you have that, and you are in sync, the unions that have real political operations, like the NEA [National Education Association], the AFT [American Federation of Teachers], the Service Employees [International Union], the AFSCME [American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees], those kinds of unions are ongoing [and their] political operations can be extremely helpful.

And then [with] a lot of the private-sector unions, politics is not as all-consuming as it is in the public-sector unions. So it’s a little different there. And you’ve got to really work to get them energized. They communicate with their own members, tell them why they are for somebody, and do things that are outside the campaign apparatus with more credibility than the campaigns have pitching their own candidacy. So they can be very influential.

Another thing is some of these people — you take the teachers or some of the other public-employee unions — are very social organizations. They are used to organizing things. And they are used to being in contact with their members. And it’s not anything that is different than what they do in the normal day-to-day operations in their union. And so I think that that’s a big advantage. Teachers in particular are used to talking to people and convincing people, and are often very enthusiastic, very devoted. And they make a big difference.

On the Republican side, of course, the mirror image would probably be the religious right.

Yes, definitely.

You don’t have experience in that, but do you think that they are . . .

I grew up in South Carolina. I’ve got a lot of experience with them.

Do you think that they are as good at that as teachers’ unions and public-employee unions?

They can be tremendously effective. A lot of politics is getting people in one place at one specific time to do something together, which is what the elections and caucuses are usually about. The evangelical churches have an advantage, because that’s what they do every Sunday. And what they have done with their voter guides — you know, the reports that they hand out in the churches [that say] whether somebody’s pro-choice, or somebody supports abortion, somebody opposes it, [that] kind of simple dichotomy. That’s pretty powerful.

So when you compare it with the union support on the Democratic side, are they equal?

I think inside the Democratic Party, labor is very significant. But inside the Republican Party, I think that the organized evangelical Christians are just as important to the Republican process as labor is to the Democratic process.

Let’s move on to 2004. Tell me what your experience with Gephardt was then.

You know, there were a lot of things that were very different in 2004 than the other campaigns I had been involved in. One obvious thing was the advent of the Internet as a serious functioning part of communications efforts in campaigns. That was extremely important.

You say it’s important because . . .

Well, I think one thing is, you saw with the Dean campaign, organizationally, and particularly in the grass-roots fundraising area, the Internet took on an incredible role. And I think there was just more money available to a candidate like Howard Dean through the Internet that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.

Did that take Gephardt by surprise?

I think it took everybody by surprise; I don’t think anybody was prepared for it. I think, to Dean’s credit, they were able to take advantage of it. And I think the other thing that was interesting, or the other element that was a very strong part of the campaign, was the Iraq War took on incredible importance. And it was more like ’68 and ’72 than any campaign in between. I mean, it was just really a huge issue. And I think that obviously propelled Dean’s candidacy. But it was an issue that just was stunning in its intensity.

I really think Gephardt had two barriers that kept him from taking off. One was the sense that he had been around a long time, and that Democrats had not done well in the last few years, and somehow he was associated with it. People didn’t really quite know how, or how to articulate it. But they had a sense that he had been there and done that. And people were moving on. Then the other thing was his support for the war resolution, and as a Democratic leader he was prominently out there. So those two things were key.

It’s pretty hard to be a member of Congress, and particularly a Democrat, and get through that.

Yeah. It was really tough. And then that leads me to the third thing that was a big thing. I think most of us, in our experience of politics, have concluded that people are more interested in values, and ideology, and philosophy, than they are in electoral viability. And you go back to like ’84 when people were there. The [John] Glenn campaign was trying to make a very strong case that they were more electable than anybody else.

And the activist who participated in primaries and caucuses didn’t seem to really care. In ’04, 20 years later, it was very interesting in that people really did care. And they were really looking for who they thought would be the most viable general-election candidate. And these Democrats really wanted to win. And I think part of that is the 24/7 nature of, particularly, cable coverage.

People are now getting independent information off the Internet from blogs and various websites. And people can turn on C-SPAN and watch the Jim Clyburn’s Fish Fry speaking event from Columbia, South Carolina, or the New Hampshire Democratic Party dinner, or the Iowa JJ [Jefferson-Jackson] Dinner. They watch it themselves if they want to. There is a nationalization of our politics that’s gone on. And, of course, we are just awash in polling numbers now — who is up and who is down, who is the strongest general-election candidate in both parties. So this whole question of electoral viability was a huge dynamic. And it really was very helpful to John Kerry. I think people saw him, in Iowa and New Hampshire, in particular, as a really strong candidate — great credentials, good record. People felt comfortable.

I always thought, during that period, that the establishment in Washington had a role in pushing that along as well.

I think definitely there were a lot of people inside the Beltway world who reached that conclusion. We’ve seen in the [I. Lewis “Scooter”] Libby trial sort of the incestuous relationship between the media and the political community. That got a lot of currency.

But it was very much that [Kerry] was attractive, articulate, had an experienced record, [and] looked like a presidential candidate or a president. He benefited from quite a strong media and political-establishment consensus that he was, and that helped him early on when he was having trouble getting the campaign going.

Now, you were the media person then. Right?

Yeah. I was doing the ads.

And talk to me a little bit about when you were doing ads, you got a percentage and all of that. Was that still the case when you did it? What was your agreement?

Oh, yeah. We got a commission; we were doing the media buying and producing the ads. So we got a commission on the ads.

Was it the full commission?

No, I don’t think, no. I don’t think anybody gets a full commission anymore.

So what was the structure of that campaign? Were you hired independently or did you come as part of a package with other consultants?

Well, I had been involved with Gephardt in the years after ’88 and a lot of his political activities as Democratic leader. I became part of that regular political team. And then that was just sort of a given that I was going to do it.

Who was the manager?

Steve Murphy, who has his own consulting firm in Washington: Murphy Putnam [Media]. But he basically took a leave from that and did work on the campaign. And Steve did work in the ’88 campaign as well, and ran Iowa in ’88.

But you were all kind of independent operators in that campaign?

Yeah, definitely.

My impression is that people don’t begin to create entities to work on campaigns until it’s in the general election.

This time I would say, first of all, it is expensive every time. I can think if you separated Democrats and Republicans, on the Democratic side there is just a general consensus that you don’t want to start piling on consultants and end up with four or five consulting firms, because it’s going to cost you more money.

Now, McCain has a different model: He’s hiring the whole world. And I would just love to be a fly on the wall in one of those meetings with Mark McKinnon, and Stuart Stevens, and Russ Schriefer, and Fred Davis, and Greg Stevens. I mean, they have more firepower than anybody pre-primary has ever had in a presidential.

Well, not only does it cost a lot of money, but you’ve got to be able to manage all of those voices.

Yeah. You have got to manage all of those voices. And then at some point you have to deal with the reality. Deciding what a message is and sticking to it is often better than spending all of your time searching for the perfect message.

Would you say that the McCain strategy is not a formula for success?

I don’t know, I don’t know. I mean, it would be interesting to watch. The folks that are involved in that that I know are very congenial and easy to get along with. I know Mark McKinnon and Stuart Stevens. And they are both very easy people to get along with. So maybe they can pull it all off.

Did you make money on that campaign?

No, I don’t think we made anything. I don’t know what we made in terms of income. But once you do a presidential campaign, as a media firm you sign on a presidential [campaign], it really scares off a lot of other business.

Really?

Yeah. Because then people will say, “Well, if they are going to be doing a presidential, they are not going to pay attention to my Senate race. If they’re doing a presidential, they’re not going to pay attention to my governor’s race.”

So it may be good for business in the long run, but not in the short term.

No. There is a certain gambling element to it. If the presidential campaign takes off and you go all the way, you can do quite well. And if you don’t go all of the way, you are going to end up having a pretty funky financial year.

And fundraising was difficult then, too.

Yeah, definitely.

He was struggling to raise money. Did you try to do it on the Internet?

Yeah, we did. The truth is, after Dean, this is one of the things that we found out in that campaign. Once [there was] Dean’s sort of Internet explosion financially, all the serious Democratic candidates started raising money on the Internet and doing pretty well with it.

You may or may not remember [that] there was a debate in Phoenix. And Dick had this line he repeated several times that George Bush was a miserable failure. Well, out there in the blogosphere, people all liked him. All of a sudden we were being inundated with a lot of new contributions over the Internet. So people were responding and just going to the website and sending in money because they liked his debate performance.

So again, this experience of — they like what you are saying, like what you are doing, they are watching it in the 24/7 cable universe, and then they go to your website and express their support for you financially — it’s a new dynamic. That means nobody called them. No fundraising staff called them. No candidate called them, no nothing. They are just coming in over the transom. And, of course, we saw it end by the end of the cycle. Senator Kerry was raising enormous amounts of money over the Internet.

It was said at the time, I remember, that this was the new Holy Grail. And candidates just wouldn’t have to go around begging for money from rich folks anymore. That was overstated, was it not?

Yeah, that was overstated. Because the truth is, the cost of everything involving politics just gets more expensive. The people talking about $100 million, they shudder at [this], but you can easily spend that much money without any problem. Just think about this past year’s California governor’s race. Arnold Schwarzenegger spent about $120 million getting elected governor. Now we are talking about $100 million for a whole primary nomination. That’s just a little bit out of sync with the reality of the cost.

Do you remember what percentage you got off of the web?

I don’t remember exactly. But given that we want sort of the most, the sexiest web candidate, we did pretty well. But the others stayed longer and were able to build up a list and do that kind of stuff. Like Kerry, in particular, did extremely well.

Does it have a downside, that you say something and they like it, so they send money in? Does it work in the opposite way, too?

Sure. You are much more judged in the moment. And you need those things, dollars and fundraisers, that are going to be with you in tough times, too.

I know you weren’t involved in this, but what is the understanding of what happens to the Kerry lists when it’s [over], or even the Gephardt lists?

They maintain custody of their lists.

Personally?

Yeah. Whatever, and then they can use them politically and whatever way they see fit.

And they can sell them, right?

Yeah. In the direct-mail world, people get accumulated lists for years and trade them. So Senator Frist for Senate can trade with Bill Carrick for Senate for names and expand their lists. So we are still in the ground floor on this Internet stuff. But I think, ultimately, there will be a market for all of these lists.

Well, somebody told me that Bob Dole is still making money off of his lists.

Oh, I am sure.

And he was pre-Internet.

Yeah. Well, he’s probably doing very well on the direct-mail lists.

But that’s not really factored in the campaign, because that’s the aftermarket, so to speak. Right?

Yeah.

Billion-dollar — you were talking about how big the campaign is. The more money in it, is it just getting bigger or is there a change in its nature?

Well, I think a very important thing to recognize is that fundamentally, old media is never replaced by new media. Television was going to get rid of movies and radio. Well, of course, that didn’t happen. People still went to the movie theaters. And then radio changed and evolved, and became more segmented. And we ended up with country stations, and news stock stations, and rock-and-roll stations, and oldies, and on and on and on. But we still have radio. And it’s still very much a part of our lives.

It just adds more expense. And then you have functions of more-traditional advertising than you do on television or radio. The traditional mail operation you might have, doing targeted mailings to people, you are adding on to that all the Internet functions.

And you have to hire bloggers now.

Yeah, now you have to hire bloggers. And you’d better be careful with them, I guess.

The 527s have become an enormous influence in this, and I assume you see this — and not just in national races — but you see it in California races as well.

I think the financial rule — one of the unintended consequences of campaign-finance reform [is that] the courts have left two things constitutionally sacrosanct. One is self-funders, people who are going to throw their own money in and run for office. Perot, obviously, had an enormous influence on a national level doing that. And then Mike Bloomberg could do that if he ran for president.

So you have the self-funding thing. Another thing, you have independent expenditures, 527s, all of this money that is really outside the control of the campaigns, but is being used to benefit candidates. Those expenditures, very often, have significant influence over the campaigns. And I think they will be even more influential this time. They find it an easier way to raise money to support the candidate that they like.

Influence over the campaign? Exactly what are you saying?

I don’t know that they influence. I think in some ways the campaigns would rather do without them. They are by their very nature more reckless than the campaigns.

Well, are the campaigns competing for money with them?

Sometimes, if you go to some traditional fundraising person and they decide, “Well, it would be easier for me just to write a check to this 527 and support them than it would be for me to sit on the phone for hours asking friends and associates to give money to the campaign.”

Have you seen that happen?

Yeah, it’s happening.

And, of course, it does satisfy, in the sense, the proliferation of media.

It does. I’ll give you an example. In ’04 there was a 527 put together by people who wanted to support candidates other than Howard Dean. Ostensibly they were trying to help Gephardt and Kerry. And they did a 527 attacking Dean by themselves without the campaign being involved. And, of course, it triggered a whole bunch of negative advertising that ended up with Dean attacking Gephardt from his campaign, and Gephardt hitting him back. But the catalyst was a 527.

And also proved, obviously, very negative, too.

Oh, very negative. And it ended up being damaging to them both. Gephardt ended up being damaged by the people who ostensibly thought they were helping him.

Let’s talk about consultants. A lot of problems are being laid at the feet of consultants like yourself. Do you think there are problems created by having consultants in that kind of business? Is there is a downside to the role of consultants in American politics?

I think part of what we have seen is that we have more exposure — starting all of the way back to Teddy White and The Making of the President — to the inside operations of the campaigns, every cycle. We know more about what’s going on inside the campaigns. And we have more people who feel like they can critique the campaigns from the outside, because, after all, they were watching Chris Matthews and some of these [other television journalists].

You have all of that going on. So there is a lot more focus on what the role of consultants are. And then, I think, there is another parallel and an extension to that, which is [that] a lot of people feel like there is an attitude that is pretty pervasive and among many kinds of voters, of all sorts of partisan and ideological categories: They just don’t feel like politics is authentic anymore.

And they blame the consultants, don’t they?

Nameless, faceless consultants are easy to blame. And, of course, a lot of the blame is cast by various journalistic entities — editorial columnists, reporters. And, of course, they are part of the problem, too, because there is less media coverage than ever before. But at the same time, it’s more. There is less print coverage and less extensive coverage. But the coverage is, basically, more cynical. And then we don’t really know what the lines are to draw between our bloggers and journalists. And is Steve Colbert or Jon Stewart a journalist. Is Wonkette journalism? And then, as you know, as you look at Time and Newsweek, this isn’t really Henry Luce’s Time magazine anymore, is it? It’s kind of snarky and hip, and all kinds of little charts. And Newsweek has an up arrow and down arrow, it’s . . .

Superficial, I think, is what you are [saying].

Yeah, this is very superficial and very cynical. The tone of the front page of the paper, the tone of the evening news, resembles more of the sports coverage than it does substantive political coverage. And I think all of that contributes to it. But it’s easier to blame the consultants than to do much self-examination by the candidates themselves. Are they really authentic? We now have candidates decrying the use of consultants while they have multiple consultants on their payroll.

And then, of course, journalism is going through a lot of changes. And it’s economic as well as substantive. It’s hard for them to stop and say, “Hey, wait a minute, maybe we’re part of this.” And then people do it all of the time, but it’s just hard to correct it.

Well, it doesn’t sound like you are saying that consultants don’t have any role. It’s just that you are saying they are a part of all this.

Yeah. I never believed when I got involved in politics at the beginning that campaign consultants were going to be the end-all and be-all of the political process. And they have gotten more important, as a lot of other things have gotten less important. And then we are going to this transition where we have new things going on. But we don’t know quite how to judge them. And it’s just very complex.

And then with the proliferation of talk radio and talk television and the “Crossfire”-ization of our political debate in the country, it’s often easier to have two consultants on, talking back and forth at each other, throwing hand grenades back and forth, than it is to have a substantive debate between two elected officials. Because elected officials are going to say things like, “Well, in all due respect to the gentlelady from California . . .” Whereas the consultants are going to do something that the television producers like better, which is like: “You are a scum.” “No, you are.”

I remember one of the first ways I met you had to do with a little opposition research you were doing. I gather that is a field that has really ballooned of late, and that it’s become more sophisticated.

Oh, yeah, sure. The research capacities of campaigns have just enormously expanded from what it was even 10 years ago or five years ago. I mean, first of all, the Internet has contributed to that. I mean, the best opposition-research entity in the country is called Google.

That’s pretty low-cost, huh?

Yeah, very low cost. And it’s just more accessible. And then, I think, when R.J. [Cutler] and [D.A.] Pennebaker did that War Room movie about Clinton in ’92, that became a big part of the campaign culture. There is a whole generation of political consultants and operatives who spend their whole time trying to figure out how to handle the war room, and back and forth, and answering charges, and leveling countercharges. And it’s doing research on yourself to know what they are going to find out about you.

And then, of course — one of the things that contributed enormously to expansion of the opposition research — when you had like Congressman Y challenging Senator X, you then know [that] the research package is essentially their voting records. You really can see how they voted and compare them. Well, when Senator Y is challenged by self-funding businessman X, he doesn’t have a voting record. So then people started going out and figuring out, “Okay, this guy is made of billions of dollars — how did he make it? So the territory on which opposition research is waged is now much bigger. It’s all of this financial stuff and business dealings.

And then we get into, like, “Harold Ford went to a Playboy mansion party.” Finding out that kind of information is easier. And then it’s like almost all opposition research is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy, because they want campaigns to find out things about the opposition. Invariably they end up in public domain somehow.

And it’s really standard practice now, right?

Oh, it would be considered malpractice not to do it. If you were just a perfectly straight candidate who never intended to say anything negative about your opponent, you would still go do opposition research, because you know [that] they might say something negative about you. And polling contributes to this, too. Because now you can quantify how far ahead you are or how far behind you are. And so [if] a candidate’s 15 points behind, they start trying to figure out how to catch up. Pull out the stops.

I have looked at many campaign reports and never seen opposition research actually in the checks written.

Oh, they are. I mean, they are usually something like JMX Consulting or Smith and Jones, Limited.

Just some nondescript company that you would never find.

Yeah. No, you can find their name and, well, you can find them. I mean, I can look at these reports and tell you who they all are.

Well, I might come back to you and ask you for a little help then.

And, of course, the other thing is when we first hit it, it became sort of a cottage industry, opposition-research firms, that were doing research on candidates, self-research, research of opposition. And they would come up with written reports. And there would be a book on the candidate and all that kind of stuff. Now with the Internet, a recent law-school graduate wants to spend a year or two working on a presidential campaign, comes in, and they end up being terrific researchers. So a lot of it just ends up being Mary Smith, being paid as a campaign employee.

Monitoring the Internet, too, is part of it.

Yeah. And it’s finding out everything; you have all of the world of public documents you can explore. And you have the entire world of voting records you can explore, all of that stuff. And then, on top of that, you have the entire world of print journalism and electronic journalism you have access to.

Nothing is lost anymore.

Nothing. You can always find it. And if you can’t find it, you can find out where to find it.

I have one last question. Are there any ethical issues that bother you about political work?

I think the biggest thing you have to keep in mind is what your ultimate objective is. It’s like somebody’s office. And don’t do anything that you don’t want to read about in the front page of The New York Times, the L.A. Times. Because whatever you do is going to be public.

Have you witnessed some hair-raising things?

In 1994, Feinstein-[Michael] Huffington [California Senate race] things. Went through everything. There were private detectives tailing Dianne [Feinstein]’s family members. Six months after the campaign I had my phone system changed. And the guy who was doing it says, “Have you ever had your phone checked for bugs?” And I said: “What? What do you mean, bugs?” He says, “There is some evidence here that somebody had a tap on your line.”

So there has been really crazy stuff. But I think you just shouldn’t do anything in the campaign that you wouldn’t do in real life. That’s just the bottom line.