Hominid Views

Is there some kind of “hit” campaign against Mike McGavick? There is according to Joel Connelly’s column in today’s Seattle PI.

McGavick instantly became “lobbyist Mike” in state Democrats’ news releases. Last week he faced a highly politicized lawsuit charging that he and the company agreed to “an illegal giveaway of Safeco assets.”

Vilification of McGavick, the most talented Senate candidate recruited by Republicans in 2006, stands as a model for the bipartisan tactics of debasement infecting American politics.

Joel has it correct in one sense. There are numerous bloggers digging up information about McGavick and posting the information on their public journals that cast McGavick in a not-so-positive light. No doubt there are numerous other groups digging up McGavick dirt to use against him.

I think Joel confuses dissemination of factual negative information with dissemination of rumor, unsubstantiated harmful information, and overt lies. The latter is now known as “swiftboating.” The former is known as free speech.

As Goldy argues, the “attacks” on McGavick are mild and fact-based compared to what Republicans routinely dish out:

I don’t believe that by contemporary standards Mike!™ has been all that vilified. (Yet.) We’ve called him a “lobbyist” – he was one. We’ve ridiculed him for prevaricating on several controversial issues – and he has. We’ve characterized the $28.3 million golden parachute he negotiated after announcing his resignation from SAFECO as “obscene” – I think many shareholders, policyholders and laid-off employees would agree that it is.

What we haven’t done is accused him killing one of his best friends, or of being a coward and a traitor who hates America. We haven’t morphed him into a terrorist or accused him of caring more about sex offenders than about innocent children. We haven’t publicly debated the unusual shape of his penis.

Joel closes his column with his own negative attack on Goldy:

The anti-McGavick campaign has been a mean, low-down attack on a stand-up guy.

On the horsesass.org Web site, which helped spawn the lawsuit, founder David Goldstein held forth last Thursday: “McGavick’s midlife conversion to ‘civility’ is a joke to anyone who remembers the vicious campaign he ran on behalf of Slade Gorton.”

Not true, Goldie [sic], and you didn’t even live here then.

Not true, Joel? Let’s see what the press “remembers” about the 1988 campaign that pitted Slade Gorton against Rep. Mike Lowry. Mike McGavick is widely recognized as the engineer behind Gorton’s comeback—Gorton’s own “Karl Rove” if you will. Joel, himself, acknowledged this last year when he wrote of McGavick (Seattle PI):

Still, politics runs in his blood. McGavick was mastermind behind the 1988 political comeback and come-from-behind U.S. Senate victory of Slade Gorton.

Joel’s impression is verified by articles at the time, e.g. (Seattle Times, Oct 16, 1988. pg. B.1):

McGavick and a couple of dozen campaigners and consultants handle most of Gorton’s strategy, dealing with the press, taping the TV spots that rip into the Democrats.

Gorton, meanwhile, remains strategically removed from the fray.

If we accept McGavick as the “mastermind” behind Gorton’s victory, then McGavick must also get credit as the “evil genius” behind the mud-slinging that propelled Gorton to victory.

One of the things that Gorton is well remembered for around these parts is his attacks against “Seattle Liberals”. They even made the New York Times (Nov 3, 1988. pg. B.15) once:

Mr. Gorton says his opponent is ”more liberal than Ted Kennedy, and more liberal than even Seattle can support.” In speeches that play well outside the populous Puget Sound area, Mr. Gorton says, ”I will be a senator for all the people of the state, not just for a handful of liberals in downtown Seattle.”

You may recall that McGavick, who promised to run a civil campaign, was caught last January using anti-Seattle rhetoric while campaigning in Spokane:

The other day, McGavick was speechifying in Spokane when he tossed out this odd quip: “I like to say I was born in Seattle when you weren’t embarrassed to say you were from Seattle.”

Back to 1988. Here is another example of some McGavick-inspired duplicity (Seattle Times, Nov 2, 1988, pg. G.2):

A new Slade Gorton campaign brochure, aimed at conservative Republicans, slams Democrat Mike Lowry’s support for gay rights and his “big zero” rating from a publication called the Biblical Scorecard.

“Mike Lowry was one of only two Northwest congressmen to receive a zero from the Candidates Biblical Scorecard,” the Gorton mailer says. “This means Mike Lowry voted 100 percent against family-moral-freedom issues.”

The Biblical Scorecard, published by Christian Voice of Washington, D.C., rates members of Congress based on their votes on issues such as abortion, school prayer, the balanced-budget amendment, contra aid and more. Most Democrats get extremely low scores, while Republicans score much better.

What the brochure failed to mention, however, is that in 1986, during his last year in the Senate, Gorton scored a paltry 31 out of 100. In fact, in 1988 Gorton got a zero score because he failed to respond to the group’s questionnaire. Both scores were unmentioned in the brochure.

The brochure was disturbingly dishonest in what it left out. And it was inflammatory in what it included:

The brochure cites a quote from a 1985 newspaper in which a teacher says a gay-rights bill, supported by Lowry, would “jeopardize our health, our children and our children’s morals.” The mailing also repeats the more-familiar attacks on Lowry’s stands on defense and drugs.

I’ll have more to say about the drugs issue later.

Even though both campaigns turned nasty that election season, there is a qualitative difference between the approach taken by Lowrey’s and Gorton’s campaigns. Look at the the characterization of two competing advertisements near the end of the election season (Seattle Times, Nov 6, 1988. pg. D.2):

“Mike Lowry, the liberal even Seattle can’t afford,” says the Gorton ad, complete with full-screen images of Khomeini and Gadhafi.

“Slade Gorton’s been working for the nuclear industry for years,” says the Lowry narrator over a television image of a bomb factory. “Do you really expect him to stop now?”

The difference between these is that Gorton’s ads constitute a blatant, fact-less, smear. I mean, really…Khomeini and Gadhafi? The Lowry campaign stated facts, not smears. The visuals of a bomb factory don’t sink to the same levels as associating Lowry with public enemies number one and two. The bombs at least have some relationship to what Gorton was doing. What the hell does Khomeini and Gadhafi have to do with being an “expensive liberal?”

Perhaps the nastiest bit of negative campaigning to come from the Gorton campaign was a 30 second commercial that suggested that Lowry wanted to legalize marijuana. From The Seattle Times (Oct 14, 1988, pg. E.1):

Democrat Mike Lowry is demanding an apology from Republican Slade Gorton for one of Gorton’s latest television commercials.
The ad, which accuses Lowry of supporting legalization of marijuana, is based solely on a little-noticed story on page 11 of a 9-year-old student newspaper.
[...]

Gorton, who lost his Senate seat two years ago, is running largely on a get-tough-on-drugs platform this time around. His newest ad sternly declares: “In 1979, Mike Lowry supported legalizing marijuana.”

This came as quite a surprise to many voters – even Lowry supporters. During the Senate campaign, the Renton congressman has not advocated legalizing marijuana or any other drug. And he says he always has opposed legalization.
“Gorton ran an untruthful ad,” Lowry says.

Gorton defends the ad. After all, he says, Lowry started the television ad war by misrepresenting Gorton’s stance on Social Security cost-of-living increases.

The basis for Gorton’s charge about Lowry’s position on marijuana is in the 11th paragraph of a story on page 11 of the Nov. 21, 1979, edition of The Daily. [...] According to the article, Lowry was at a community meeting at Seattle Central Community College, fielding questions about the arms-control treaty, defense spending and weapons lobbyists.
Then, the story says:

“He told a small group of people he would support their quest to legalize marijuana. `Prohibition of anything doesn’t work,’ he said, disagreeing with their request that alcohol be prohibited instead.”
[...]

They would have liked to verify the story, says Gorton aide Gary Smith, but couldn’t track down the former student reporter.
So they went with it, taping and using a 30-second spot lambasting their opponent.

Aides now say the 9-year-old article is enough in itself to support their charge. Asked if he had any more evidence that Lowry supports legalization, Gorton’s campaign manager Mike McGavick snapped: “I have no indication that he doesn’t.”
But they conceded they have no evidence that Lowry ever proposed legalization, cast a vote for it or was quoted elsewhere in the media as supporting it.

Meanwhile, two days after the ad went on the air, the Gorton campaign contacted Kelly Smith, the former UW reporter, now an assistant to California State Assemblyman Burt Margolin.

Kelly Smith “stands by the story,” says Gary Smith, Gorton’s aide. “He’s prepared to sign an affidavit.”

That was a little white lie.

The Seattle Times (Oct 13, 1988. pg. D.4) published an article titled “UW Reporter Denies Claim in Gorton Ad, Says Lowry Didn’t Back Legal Marijuana:”

A former University of Washington student reporter says Democratic Senate candidate Mike Lowry did not advocate legalizing marijuana, as claimed in a Slade Gorton TV ad now airing across the state.

The Daily, the UW student newspaper, quoted former reporter Kelly Smith as saying that Lowry spoke against prohibition of alcohol at a student meeting nine years ago. “But he never came out and said `I support legalizing marijuana,’ ” Smith said.
[...]

McGavick says the Gorton claim is based strictly on the 1979 student article, and that Lowry, Democratic congressman from Renton, is “running from his record” on drugs.

Lowry, who never saw the UW article, maintains he does not and has not advocated legalizing any drugs.

“It is even more clear now that the Gorton campaign was intentionally misrepresenting my record,” Lowry said today. “The Gorton campaign has clearly crossed the line of acceptable campaign conduct by airing this false ad.”

A few days later another nugget of information came out in the Seattle Times (Oct 17, 1988, pg. B.1):

[Kelly] Smith thinks it’s “bizarre” that Republican Slade Gorton—Lowry’s opponent in the U.S. Senate race—is using the UW Daily article as the sole evidence that Lowry said such a thing.

Especially since Lowry says he didn’t. And doesn’t.

“Maybe it was the copy editor,” suggests Smith.

Who was that editor?

“Sharon Kanareff,” Smith said.

Kanareff, who pleads innocent to any creative editing, is now Gorton’s press secretary.

The “nasty campaigning” episode helped inspire Seattle Times reporter Terry McDermott to write an article (Oct 16, 1988. pg. A.1) titled, “`Worst Year Ever’: Why Campaign Tactics Are So Negative.”

The Gorton campaign claimed that the marijauana legalization smear ads were a response to Lowry’s ads “misrepresenting Gorton’s stance on Social Security cost-of-living increases.” Here is the story behind that from the Seattle Times (Oct 5, 1988. pg. H.1):

“There’s a reason Slade Gorton isn’t in the Senate anymore,” says the Lowry ad, now being telecast across the state. “He voted to deny low-income senior citizens a Social Security cost-of-living increase . . . not once but nine times . . .”

Then he voted 13 times to cut Medicare and health services for seniors.”

Mike McGavick, Gorton’s campaign manager, acknowledged that his candidate voted against the Social Security cost-of-living increases or “COLAs.” But he said he was disappointed with the demagoguery of the Lowry ad.
[...]

Lowry’s campaign put out a not-so-nice ad, but an ad based on facts (you know, those things with a well known liberal bias). In response, McGavick engineered an attack ad based on the flimsiest information (later shown to be false), and information that contradicted Lowry’s record. Even when McGavick was confronted with the inadequacy of the evidence, he essentially spun it by lying: “I have no indication that he doesn’t.” Except for…umm…Lowry’s own statements.

So back to McGavick current senatorial campaign. If there is a smear campaign, where are the lies about McGavick? Where are the blatent distortions of his record? Where are the smears devoid of facts?

Mike McGavick is not being “swiftboated” in any sense of the neologism. Rather, he has some weaknesses, some past errors, and some tender spots. Mike is a fool if he believes that people are not going to dig up, analyze, and publicize them!

Joel Connelly, on the other hand, is experiencing a bit of selective memory from the 1988 campaign—or maybe he was reading the wrong paper.

Either way, Joel seems a little uncharacteristically starry-eyed about McGavick….

Update: David Postman wrote on a related topic yesterday. He asked McGavick about the marijuana legalization ad in the 1988 campaign:

“It was a mistake,” McGavick said. “I’ve always second-guessed whether we should have pulled the ad.”