by Alan Huffman
Seeing how dedicated he was to exploring the campsite, I have occasionally surreptitiously buried curious metal objects in the area, such as a commemorative coin from the Indy 500, for him to locate, unearth and puzzle over.
“I can’t figure out what this is, but it was in the camp,” he once said, holding up a large, dirt-encrusted ball of foil that I’d fashioned from Hershey’s Kisses wrappers. Then, after examining it more closely, he tossed it at me and said, “Very funny.”
Michael’s love of history, and of excavating its evidence, are the common denominator of his personal and professional endeavors, and we’re alike in that regard. It’s all about the process of discovery. The excavation may turn out to be a waste of time, but the point is to get beneath the obscuring surface of things.
Sometimes a single clue brings everything else into sharper focus. During a research project in Kansas City, we happened on two meaningful revelations, one involving a steamboat that sank in the Missouri River in 1856 and another regarding the sources of campaign funding of an affable-seeming candidate for Congress. The steamboat, the Arabia, had struck a snag and gone down in the river with two hundred tons of cargo and was eventually buried under forty feet of silt. The wreckage was excavated in the late eighties, revealing a remarkable archive of unexpurgated facts about life on the American frontier.
On its maiden voyage the boat had transported U.S. soldiers into the Western territories, including what is now the state of Kansas, to subdue Native Americans who were, not surprisingly, hostile. During a later excursion a load of rifles aboard the boat had been seized by the authorities, ostensibly because they were destined for sale to the Indians. The Arabia also carried guns for combatants in “Bleeding Kansas,” the setting for a proxy war between proslavery and abolitionist settlers of the old American West. In short, the Arabia’s history and its cargo were freighted. It wasn’t all about beaver hats and calico.
The message of the Arabia museum, which we visited over that weekend, is that settlers needed all sorts of very specific things to conquer a continent, and that the American frontier was at once about attacking and abetting those settlers’ avowed enemies. Back in the 1850s, some businessman on the frontier, who perhaps railed against the Indians in the local saloon, was secretly involved in selling them guns. Today, his self-serving counterparts are the mercenary businessmen who sell arms to rogue governments overseas, or move their factories to countries with cheaper wages, taking with them hundreds of thousands of American jobs.
Translated for the contemporary immigration debate, which formed the central issue of the opponent’s congressional campaign, the inconsistencies of the frontier gun trade were akin to the inconsistencies of hassling illegal aliens while offering them low-paying jobs, and randomly enforcing laws prohibiting employers from hiring them. Though the Kansas candidate presented what appeared to be a thoughtful position on curbing illegal immigration, hidden from view we found what appeared to be darker motivations, judging from some of his sources of funding. He was attractive on the surface, with his careful mannerisms and telegenic good looks, and had, before our arrival, benefitted from a general lack of media curiosity. He was, as they say, all-American looking, though that is a misnomer; he looked nothing like a Native American, having descended from some European line. Then, buried beneath, we found an ugly truth: He had received significant funding from a notoriously racist group. It was there, in the public record.
Campaigns in which all the candidates are black or in which all of the candidates are white tend to respond differently to racial issues than do campaigns in which the slate of candidates is mixed. Race is one of those issues that plays differently from one place to another, but relying on or even accepting the support of a racist group is damaging to a mainstream campaign anywhere nowadays. American history is rife with examples of powerful individuals and groups rolling over the weak, but few people are comfortable admitting they’re doing it. When you find a guy running for Congress who gets major funding from an organization that subscribes to the theory that blacks are genetically inferior to whites, you’ve found a potentially damaging clue.
Michael and I are always excited to point the finger at racists, even if we’re sometimes mistakenly swept up in that wide net for the simple reason that we’re white guys from below the Mason-Dixon line. We were pleased, therefore, to discover that the Kansas candidate was also linked to the leader of a radical group that denigrated the region’s growing Latino population. Even more exciting was that the candidate himself had written that apartheid could be justified in the name of political stability. The candidate’s words had not previously been publicized, yet they provided evidence of the kind of intolerance once reserved for hate-mongering groups such as the white Citizens Council in the civil rights–era South.
Perhaps if this had been the 1940s, finding a link between a white candidate and a racially polarizing group would not have been the campaign’s death knell. In this case the guy got slammed. Losing didn’t prevent him from becoming an outspoken leader of the anti-immigration movement, or from becoming a popular guest of such cable TV hosts as Glenn Beck, however. He managed to make a name for himself, though for our purposes here, he’s just another XXXXXX. We aren’t here to name names, and not only because we forget them or because someone could be hurt or because many of them are significant only for a while. We, too, have our confidences. Objective and independent though we must be, our research reports are, aside from the public records they cite, confidential, and they become the property of the campaigns for which we work.
No one gives you everything. Michael and I are on a long-running search for facts, but we don’t hold ourselves out as the absolute, ultimate sources of truth. We find things. We pass our findings along. They make their way to you. It’s all a matter of how much information gets transferred. There are times when redacting is called for. For example, you don’t need to see the bloodied body of the murder victim. The WikiLeaks release of documents and videos—generally a laudable effort to make government more transparent—could also endanger American troops. So who, ultimately, should get to draw the line?
In the case of XXXXXX, our presidential appointee, he doesn’t appear to be evil—we never see him with the whips and chains—but the truth of his fitness to serve has been summarily concealed. In this manner, liars, scoundrels and obfuscators on both sides occasionally prevail.
XXXXXX would eventually be confirmed, without ever being fully scrutinized, despite our best efforts. No one will ever know, for sure, whether he was the right choice for the position.
Chapter 12
Michael
In between campaigns, during a busy summer of research, I’m able to take a short retreat to the mountains of Colorado. There, in a wood-framed watering hole in a tiny mining town, I meet Paul. He’s preparing to put back a shot of tequila when I introduce myself and ask him how he’s doing.
“Well,” he says, “I’ve got a morphine suppository up my ass and I’m doing great.”
I like him immediately, and even more so when he tells me that he enjoys a pastime of blasting bowling balls into the sides of mountains from a cannon he built himself. So the following day, I meet Paul next to a mountain as he prepares a demonstration involving sixteen pounds of round hardened plastic, gunpowder and a homemade howitzer.
Dressed in a bowling shirt and a shiny helmet with a steel spike protruding from the top, he shouts a warning from an electronic megaphone to any errant hikers who might have unwittingly wandered downrange of his mortar. Then, with a laugh, he ignites the weapon. As the bowling ball gains altitude, traveling at least a half mile into the air, Paul looks over and shouts, “Listen when it starts coming down because those finger holes will catch the wind and that ball will begin to whistle.” Sure enough, it does. And the awe I felt just moments before turns to nervousness and mild panic as the sixteen pounder begins a high-pitched descent in a direction that seems precariously close to me and the other onlookers who
’ve gathered for the show. How do you escape the path of a screaming bowling ball hurtling from the heavens when you have no idea where it’s going to land? In the end, you just watch it as it grows larger and larger and hope it doesn’t make its final resting place in your head.
It occurs to me, a few days later when I’m back researching one of our own candidates, that political campaigns can be a lot like dodging bowling balls. You never know who is out there, gunning for you, armed with what, or from which direction the attack will come. Further complicating matters, the campaign managers often don’t know their own candidates, and sometimes it’s hard to tell where the candidates themselves are coming from.
When hired for what’s called “self-research,” Alan and I have a responsibility to examine our candidates as energetically as we do their opponents, which is crucial, yet perilous. We’ve researched our share of candidates who were not born leaders, and who resented our finding information about them despite the fact that the other side would likely discover the same things. Candidates have even gone so far as to actually ask us whose side we’re on.
One sitting congressman got quite miffed at Alan for discovering that he was in default on his property taxes, and had previously paid them late on numerous occasions. Alan thought he’d want to know that not only did the records reflect several late payments, but that he was late now, as in: Maybe you should go pay your taxes. Yet the congressman reacted as if Alan had somehow been responsible for the oversight. No matter what they say, candidates often don’t know what’s in their own record, and sometimes don’t want to, with potentially disastrous results.
Our relationships with just about everyone involved in a campaign, whether it is a pollster, a campaign manager or a candidate, are brief, lasting only as long as the campaign and beginning again when a new season starts. Within a campaign, we’re privy to confidential information, but as free agents we’re not precisely part of the internal pecking order. The result is that we’re sometimes seen as a potential threat, or at best a necessary evil or a killjoy; all that seems to matter to the candidate is our friendly fire. On the flip side, some see us as confidantes—safe, because we’re outsiders.
Political campaign staffers are often an itinerant bunch, landing in states and on races with which they are largely unfamiliar. On one race in Florida, the newly arrived campaign manager probably wished he’d landed anywhere else.
Alan and I had worked with him in past elections. He knew his business and knew the components that make up an effective campaign. He needed a poll done quickly to gauge the landscape and to see where the candidates stood in this upcoming race for Congress. But before he could do his poll, he needed research on his own candidate to assess his strengths and weaknesses. So he called us.
As far as we knew, at the time we talked, we’d already been hired. Our proposal had been approved and partial payment for our services was forthcoming, we’d been told. All we needed to do now was talk with the candidate about “campaign 101 stuff,” as our campaign manager described it, and get to work. No problem, we’d done it many times before. Just a chat about the basics.
“Why in the hell do I need to hire you?” The tone of the first question from our congressional hopeful’s mouth took me aback for a moment. “What could you possibly tell me about myself that I don’t already know?” he asked, with surprising rancor. “I’m not sure why we’re even having this discussion.”
This didn’t sound like it was going to be a simple introductory course in political research, as predicted, but I was stuck in a position where all I could do was forge ahead. First, I told him, we needed to conduct what’s called “self-research,” so that we know where he might be most vulnerable. Second, although he might very well be familiar with every detail in his own background, the campaign was not, and needed this information to be able to conduct a poll. Third, the research we do would enable him to better prepare for attacks from his opponent. And finally, I said, “You can rest assured that your opponent is already gathering this same information about you, and he’ll use it to his benefit if he can.”
I explained to him the research process, how we go about collecting and piecing together information from courthouses, newsclips, state and federal agencies, databases and even acquaintances, when possible and permissible. I told him that we usually begin by interviewing the candidate for background information, which was one reason I’d called today.
This guy was having none of it. His political resume consisted of a stint as mayor of a small city and he honestly seemed to believe he knew what was best for this race. As hard as I tried, I was just not able to convince him that running for mayor and seeking a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives are two different animals. It’s the difference between a hornet and an elephant: One can sting you. The other can just stomp you to death.
“You guys are all the same,” he said after I finished my brief tutorial.
“I’m not sure I follow you,” I replied.
“You political guys, you’re all the same. You’re just in it for the money.”
This wasn’t what I had expected, and I didn’t even know how to respond, so I didn’t. My silence, unfortunately, inspired him to continue.
“I mean, you come into these campaigns and you try to sell us these things we don’t need. You see a big pot of money and you want to make sure you get a piece.”
All I was trying to do, I told him, was show him the importance of research, as I was asked to do by his campaign manager. In all the years we’ve worked with campaigns, this was the first time that a candidate had launched into such a bitter tirade. His constant reiteration that there was nothing noteworthy in his background with which he was not already familiar was too much. My first thought was, “What does this guy have to hide?”
Our work encompasses admirable candidates, unlikable candidates, simply strange candidates and candidates who lack the potential negatives that we typically dote on. We always look hard, because the worst thing we can do is to overlook something—including something the candidate already knows—that could be used against him. The second worst thing is taking the candidate’s word that he’s told you everything you need to know and that further research is not necessary. We learned that lesson the hard way some years ago when a candidate running for Congress in Missouri was adamant that he regularly voted in all elections and had never missed casting a ballot since registering to vote. It’s not that candidates lie about this stuff; it’s that sometimes they just don’t remember or don’t really know. So we believed him, only checking the votes he had cast in primary and general elections.
Unfortunately, his opponent discovered that he had not voted in a considerable number of local elections and publicly blasted him for his absences. After all, the opponent asked, why should voters give a candidate their vote when he doesn’t even make the effort to vote himself?
Needless to say, the campaign was not happy. We took full responsibility for the screwup, the only other option being to say, “But the candidate told us he voted.” That was never going to fly.
Sometimes we get close to campaign staffers or to the candidate; sometimes we merely do our work, turn it over to them and move on. But for the most part, many of our own candidates seem to feel that the only certifiable difference between us and their worst enemy lies in who gets our report. And, to some extent, that’s true.
Our main goal is to make sure our candidates are prepared, to outline, highlight and summarize every salient fact about their life and place it in a political context. Supplementing those points with warnings that “these are the issues you’ll be hit with” at least gives the candidate and the campaign time to pause and consider their responses. But sometimes, even when candidates know all there is to know, when they’ve planned for every contingency, when they think they’re ready for what’s coming, they still find themselves running side to side in a hail of bowling balls.
During a race in the Midwest, our candidate was getting a
ssailed in TV ads because he had voted for a billion dollars in tax increases in a previous elective office, had a poor attendance record in that office and was involved in some questionable personal business dealings. It had all been there in our report, laid out bullet point by bullet point. It had “be ready” written all over it. Yet for whatever reason, the candidate’s primary response was to ask his opponent if he would kindly pull his TV spots and stop the negative campaigning, or conversely, to tell the “full story” behind the tax votes. Of course that wasn’t going to happen. First, the ads were factual. Second, they were working. And third, such ads are precisely meant never to tell the full story. They are intended to tell the part of the story that makes the recipient of the attack look like a scumbag.
So our candidate crawled under a desk as the warheads fell and tried his best to weather the attack. With more money in the bank, his opponent was able to buy more airtime and keep the attacks coming. At one point during the campaign, when a political colleague died in office unexpectedly, he hopefully asked his opponent for a cease-fire. Briefly suspending campaign ads during such tragedies is not uncommon and is intended as a show of respect. So our candidate pulled his spots, but his opponent refused to honor the temporary armistice. The assault continued until our candidate was simply bombed into oblivion.
If there is one type of candidate who possibly has it worse than others when it comes to politically accursed backgrounds, it must be judges running for other offices, especially appellate judges or state Supreme Court justices—judges whose job it is to affirm or reverse the decisions of lower court judges. We almost feel sorry for them when they’re our candidates because we know that the research is going to almost always turn up the things that make political opponents drool. It’s even worse when our candidate is a genuinely honorable person who is only doing his judicial duty.
