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Dirty Politics (cont.)

Among other things, Comstock’s unit was responsible for turning up Gore testimony in which he claimed he hadn’t been present for a critical fundraising meeting because he drank a lot of iced tea and was in the bathroom. The incident ended up as late night talk show fodder, a money shot for opposition researchers.

Both Griffin and Comstock went on to work in the Bush administration. Griffin worked as the research director for George W. Bush’s 2004 election campaign as well, before going on to work for Karl Rove at the White House. Griffin landed in headlines in 2007 when the news broke that the Justice Department had removed the U.S. attorney in Little Rock, Arkansas, so that Griffin could be installed there instead. In congressional testimony about that and other U.S. attorney firings, Monica Goodling, an assistant to the attorney general, made reference to allegations that Griffin had also been involved in “vote caging” (sending mail to voters and selectively challenging the voter registrations of those who are apparently not at that address) activities to suppress minority voter turnout in Florida during the 2004 election.

Griffin has since left the U.S. attorney’s office and now works for Mercury Public Affairs, where he did work for the failed Fred Thompson campaign for the 2008 Republican nomination. Thompson paid the firm $30,000 in June and August 2007. For the 2008 campaign, Comstock worked for Mitt Romney, whose campaign paid her firm, Corallo Comstock, $75,000 between February and June of 2007.

In every election, there is always at least one candidate who promises to run above the fray, eschewing politics as usual and pledging to maintain the moral high ground. In 2008, both Obama and McCain have vowed to take the high road. McCain has taken fire for having registered lobbyists on his campaign payroll and had to disavow what he called “disparaging remarks” about both Obama and Clinton, made by radio host Bill Cunningham at a campaign event. And when Obama threw his hat into the ring to run for president, he pledged to run “a different kind of campaign” that would transcend the usual “backbiting and tactical” politics that have characterized more recent campaigns for president. But not long after he announced his decision to run, reporters observed that despite the pledge, he had staffed his campaign with a pretty standard supply of insider-type campaign consultants, including practitioners of opposition research. 

In effect, opposition researchers are just the types of people Obama was supposed to be running against.  In Iowa in February 2007, Politico.com asked Obama why, after all his promises to run an untraditional campaign, he was using opposition researchers. His response said much about the state of politics today.  Obama declared that issue-based opposition research was “essential to democracy.” There’s nothing wrong with compiling facts about your opponent’s record — and your own, he said. It’s what you do with the information that matters.  Obama said he would take whatever the researchers turned up and intended to use it ethically, “not making ad hominem attacks toward other candidates, … and not suggest that they’ve got untoward motives.”

Four months later Obama found himself in hot water thanks to those very same researchers.  Obama staffers had compiled an opposition research memo on Hillary Clinton outlining her connection to Indian companies that performed offshore work for American businesses. The document, with a headline referring to Clinton as the senator from Punjab, was circulated to reporters on a not-for-attribution basis. The headline was a play off a joke Clinton had made at a fundraiser held by Indian-Americans at which she had joked that she could easily win a senate election in Punjab.

But the Clinton campaign got a copy of the memo and made it public, prompting an immediate outcry about Obama’s tactics. The Capital Fax blog dubbed it “a racist, xenophobic hit on Clinton.” Others decried it for perpetuating stereotypes. Obama apologized, blaming his staff, but he nonetheless refused to disavow the practice of researching his opponents.

Opposition research itself dates back at least to our country’s first elections. “Once democracy existed, opposition research came shortly thereafter,” says Chris Lehane, one of the most feared Democrats in the world of opposition research, who worked for both Al Gore and John Kerry in recent presidential elections.

Richard Nixon and his supporters reshaped modern opposition research.  In 1971, Ken Khachigian suggested to his superiors in the White House that they develop files of information to reduce the scrambling that happens every time candidates are attacked. Working with the Republican National Committee, researchers tracked every Democratic candidate for the ’72 election and issued weekly reports on each one. The process put the GOP at the forefront of opposition research for decades to come. But when Nixon’s dirty tricks were disclosed, the aftertaste drove opposition research underground for a while.

Opposition research has emerged from the shadows and — thanks to online databases of public records — gotten much more sophisticated. But the basics are timeless.

In the 1800 election between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson supporters combed through Adams’ records and turned up statements showing he favored a “hereditary president” and a Senate with life tenure. They used the statements in pamphlets attacking Adams. Adams’ campaign fought back with accusations that Jefferson had fathered children with his slave mistress, one of the first sex scandals ever uncovered by opposition research.

[Editor’s note: In a June 4, 2008, e-mail to the Center, Tim Griffin said that Monica Goodling was aware of those vote caging allegations because he had “brought them and their falsity” to the attention of the Department of Justice while he was being considered for the U.S. attorney position. Griffin also noted that he has left Mercury Public Affairs and started his own law firm and public affairs company.]