Those nasty campaign hit pieces

June 28, 2006

By DON BENNETT
FOR THE ARGUS-COURIER

One last commentary on the June primary, and then we'll get on to more relevant issues in the weeks ahead.

Political campaigning in recent years has drawn increasingly more gripes and complaints about not just the ferocity, but also the sheer sameness of a great deal of the messages and the delivery. This is particularly true of campaigns at the state level and higher.

There is a tendency toward "me too" in campaigning, with campaign literature for different candidates looking and sounding pretty much the same for whoever is paying for the postage. In California partisan races, the same campaign piece is often duplicated for use throughout the state, with only the names and a few minor pieces of info changed. If it works in Modesto, it should work in El Centro.

The newest toy beloved by campaigners of all types is the recorded phone message. I have a request for campaign managers. If these things work, please tell me why. My own informal little poll reveals that if anyone listens to them at all, it is either for purposes of shouting raw obscenities into the phone, or to determine for sure who is sponsoring the call so the listener can vote against them. At least, I know I did.

The same can be said for receiving three pieces of mail from one candidate in one day. That happened this year in the Assembly primary. That candidate did not win.

Which brings us to what I consider to be most pernicious, despicable practice in recent electoral politics, the use of the shadowy political action committee (PAC) to be the campaign "beard," to spend money and launch attacks that cannot be attributable to the candidate.

It is ironic that this practice is a result of the latest wave of campaign finance reform, which makes you wonder about the ethical core of our legislators who create stuff like this.

Here's how it works. The candidate pledges not to raise more than a certain amount of money, and holds to that pledge. But, the law allows an independent group, or PAC, to raise money and spend money on the campaign as an interested third party. PACs are not restricted on how much money they raise or spend.

Thus, the candidate hides behind the "beard" of the PAC.

In our Assembly race both Murray and Torliatt played the PAC game. Murray used medical and building PACs to do her dirty work, while Torliatt used the unions, particularly the teachers unions.

Following a series of particularly virulent hit pieces against Murray, Torliatt had the audacity to say she did not know the PACs were going to do such heinous things. One might think that after the first one, if she really did object, she might have said to "cease and desist, this is hurting my campaign." There is no record that conversation ever took place.

Over the years, I have sat at the strategy table for a congressional campaign, five Assembly campaigns, and about 10 supervisorial races. The one thing I have learned as gospel is that the person running the campaign rules supreme, outvoted only by the candidate, and not always that. Any successful campaign is coordinated, planned and timed. Messages are based on poll results, timing is based on demographics and other factors, and it is all calculated for maximum impact when the voter finally puts the black blotch on the ballot. No campaign manager, and no candidate, is going to let a run-amok PAC do things that don't fit into the overall game plan.

Although the law supposedly says that PACs cannot be an arm of the campaign, anyone familiar with the process will tell you that in actual practice, the contention of separate campaigns is bogus. I don't care what the law says, that contention makes a mockery of reality.

Two years ago Torliatt got plenty of press for objecting to hit pieces that were pointing out inconsistencies in her positions related to building Rainier and expanding Highway 101. She even made a speech about awful hit pieces from the City Council podium.

This time around, her campaign's PAC supporters exceeded all others in the nastiness of hit pieces. There needs to be some accountability somewhere in the electoral process. Losing an election is a start, but the lesson should not be forgotten.

(Don Bennett, a business writer and consultant, has been involved with city planning issues dating back to the growth control plan of the early 1970s. A 12-year veteran of the Petaluma Planning Commission, he currently serves on the Sonoma County Planning Commission.)