Dirty Politics – Part Two
Opposition Research and the Also-Rans
BY Stephanie Mencimer | June 02, 2008
In March 2006, the conservative American Spectator’s front cover featured a photograph of Mitt Romney, with the headline “Romney Rocks!” The story suggested that he could become president and quoted prominent conservatives praising him and the idea of a Romney administration. Despite this early enthusiasm, the former Massachusetts governor’s campaign struggled to win conservative voters and managed to garner only 272 delegates out of the 1,191 needed to win the nomination.
One apparent reason for this was a series of television and radio ads run by the Log Cabin Republicans, a 501(c)(4) tax-exempt “independent” group that works within the GOP for gay and lesbian equality. Angry over Romney’s rightward shift, the group dug up clips from his 1994 U.S. Senate campaign in which he defended abortion rights and distanced himself from Ronald Reagan, and catalogued what it described as his “long list of flip-flops.” In addition to the group’s modest ad buys, the ads were replayed on several national news programs.
“I think we got good bang for our buck in terms of the media coverage,” notes the group’s president, Patrick Sammon. “Mitt Romney lost in part because he couldn’t get over the flip-flop problem. Our ads helped cement that perception about him.” Jason Stanford, a Democratic opposition researcher, concurred. “[Romney’s] old statements played a pretty big role in blunting his ability to get more Republican votes,” he says.
The Log Cabin Republicans’ use of opposition research is not unusual. Political campaigns, special interest groups, and others all employ it to dig up dirt on those they oppose. Compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars that campaigns and outside groups spend on broadcast advertising, opposition research is a relatively modest expense — but one that can dramatically reshape events, as Romney seemingly learned. When the researchers turn up mud that gets broad media exposure, it costs far less than buying advertising with as much impact. By the time November rolls around, it’s widely projected that the candidates will have raised and spent more than $1 billion — and opposition research is such an efficient use of campaign money that it actually holds down costs.
Former Senator John Edwards Feels Pretty?Early in this primary season, someone posted on YouTube a video of Edwards primping his hair before a TV appearance, set to Julie Andrews singing “I Feel Pretty” from West Side Story. The video attracted almost a million hits, in part because it fit the narrative that opposition researchers for George W. Bush created for him in 2004. The video creator remained anonymous, and the anti-Edwards forces scored a direct hit, virtually for free. Democratic strategist Chris Lehane observes: “YouTube videos can go viral very quickly. You can’t see who’s behind it.” Comparing the impact to paid ads, he says, “Two, three, four million hits, that’s a significant buy.”
Edwards, who certain right-wing pundits dubbed the “Breck Girl of politics,” also made headlines after campaign expenditure reports he filed with the Federal Election Commission revealed that he had spent $800 for two haircuts from a celebrity stylist in Hollywood and $225 on two makeup applications provided by a trendy salon in New Hampshire called the Pink Sapphire.
“The best negative story lines work best where there is a pre-existing public perception,” says Lehane, who worked for John Kerry in 2004.
In September 2007, not long after actor and former senator Fred Thompson joined the already crowded GOP presidential field, a website appeared called PhoneyFred.org. The site was posted anonymously, but it was essentially an opposition research effort framed in colorful language to highlight Thompson’s weaknesses as a candidate. Among the items on the site was a quote from Richard Nixon calling Thompson “dumb as hell.”
The talking points on the site were a serious attack on Thompson’s record. The site took aim at Thompson’s attempt to sell himself as a good ol’ country lawyer who reflected the Christian family values desired by the evangelical wing of the GOP. PhoneyFred posted extensive citations to research showing that he had worked as a lobbyist for a family planning organization.
The site failed to identify its authors, but a few weeks later, The Washington Post traced it to an executive at TTS Strategies, a South Carolina political consulting firm working for another candidate, Mitt Romney. It was quickly taken down, but the damage was done and Thompson’s campaign never mustered much support. TTS Strategies is headed by J. Warren Tompkins, a legendary Republican political strategist linked indirectly to many of the state’s most vicious campaigns.
Former Senator Fred Thompson stars in PhoneyFred.orgRudy Giuliani also experienced this phenomenon before he withdrew from the race. In late November 2007, Iowa Republicans started receiving an e-mail titled “Giuliani and his Pedophile Friends.” The e-mail read, “If Rudy becomes president, is he planning on putting people like Catholic priest Msgr. Alan Placa in his Cabinet? I hope not! Remember Fr. Placa when you go to the caucuses, and make sure your friends know, too!” (In 2003, a grand jury in Suffolk County, New York, accused a “Priest F” of child molestation and of covering up sexual abuse by other priests, but did not indict any of them because too much time had passed for the alleged offenses to be prosecuted. Placa, a longtime Giuliani friend who now works for Giuliani’s consulting firm, acknowledged that the grand jury report was referring to him and stepped down from active service as a priest, but he denies the substance of the allegations.)
The e-mail was made to look as if a prominent backer of Mitt Romney had sent it. It was a classic dirty trick: a smear that delivers a one-two punch by disseminating negative information about one candidate while making another candidate look bad for launching a smear, even one that is substantiated by facts.
Similar attacks were going on in New Hampshire, where the state attorney general is investigating allegations that anonymous telemarketers called state residents asking whether they knew, among other things, that then-frontrunner Romney is a Mormon and that he spent the Vietnam War in France as a missionary. The calls mentioned John McCain favorably, suggesting that he’d arranged for calls disguised as an opinion poll but whose intent was to smear. McCain vehemently denied this, a denial made believable because of his own experience of similar though more malicious and false attacks on him during his race against Bush during the South Carolina primary in 2000. Anonymous calls and e-mails suggested that he had fathered a black child out of wedlock, that his wife was a drug addict, and that he was mentally unstable.
The New Hampshire calls aimed at Romney were traced to a Utah telemarketing firm that has had various indirect ties to Romney himself and also had done work on behalf of Giuliani. But these calls were made at the behest of an Oregon firm, which told reporters that it was conducting legitimate opinion research, not a smear campaign. Nevertheless, it would not divulge the identity of its client. A spokesman for the state’s attorney general told the Center that, as of May 30, the office is “still in the midst of investigating” the matter.