CD-ROM Aktief 1995 #3/CDA3.iso/survival/xroberti.zip/R18

Text File | 1994-02-22 | 16KB | 250 lines

01/03/94 Smearing for profit takes off.

THE OPPO BOOM
By Ruth Shalit
John Galetta liked his job as a staff assistant in President Bush's Office of
National Service. "I was in charge of picking the daily Point of Light," he
says. "It was fun. I was the one who got the program up and running." But
after the November elections, Galetta decided it was time to try a different
tack. "I wanted to hang up my own shingle," he says. So he founded ttci
Inc.--a for-profit, full-service opposition research boutique. The former
Republican do-gooder now works around the clock exhuming dirt and scandal on
people running for office. He pores over divorce records, shareholder suits
and uniform commercial code filings. "Everyone politely despises negative
campaigning," he says. "But personally, I don't see anything wrong with
holding candidates accountable."

Neither does Bernadine Healey, a Republican candidate for the Ohio Senate
seat being vacated by Democrat Howard Metzenbaum. In September she hired
Galetta to trawl for clandestine data on Mike DeWine, her opponent in the
Republican primary. The former National Institutes of Health director wasn't
alone. A month later Mary Boyle, a Democratic contender for the Ohio seat,
hired Shawn Garvey of the San Francisco-based Smart Campaigns Inc. to
supervise her dirt-digging efforts. "My grandfather was a labor organizer,"
explains Garvey. "I was a young Socialist. Ten days that shook the world, all
that kind of stuff." But after working for three Kennedys (Ted, Joe,
Kathleen), he too made the jump to the dark side. "Times have changed," he
says. "It's getting ugly out there." Garvey's company, started in 1992, is
one of scores of opposition research firms now sprinkled across the country
like a thousand points of spite.

With television politics and campaigns hinging more and more on the personal
peccadilloes of candidates, the need for fresh dirt has spawned a cottage
industry of professional life-ruiners. What used to be the handiwork of
scrofulous teenagers hacking away in the basement of party headquarters is
now performed by top-dollar "consultants" in Italian suits. "We're
identifying good people, training them, counting on them," says Mike Plante
of the Charleston, West Virginia-based Cunningham, Plante & Associates. "You
try to pay them well and keep them. We're talking about getting folks up into
the $50,000 range, if they stay around. I think the market will bear that.
For many of them, this is the first step to becoming political consultants."

He might be right. According to Campaigns and Elections magazine, opposition
research is now the fastest-growing discipline among campaign professionals.
In 1990 the magazine began listing opposition research firms as a separate
category in its annual index of political vendors. Since then, the field has
tripled in size (This year's index listed seventy-five oppo firms). "When I
started in consulting, there were only one or two people who did this
professionally," says Democratic political consultant Robert Squier. "Now I
can't imagine any race--state assembly, state party chair, big-city mayoral
contests--run without outside research consultants." And the campaigns are
willing to pay top dollar. The preliminary results of a survey by Campaigns
and Elections Editor Ronald Faucheux indicate that office-holders will dole
out $16 million for opposition research during the 1994 election cycle alone.

Boasting nine full-time staffers and three stringers, Garvey's firm will take
a cleaver to some fifty candidates next year. "I can fax you our proposal,"
he says. "It outlines our ideology of research. We have five tiers."
Beginning with "the really nasty stuff, the cheap shots"--traffic tickets,
liens outstanding, cellular phone receipts--"we just keep going up the
ladder."

Richard Biltmeyer, research director for the National Republican Senatorial
Committee, runs his own firm, rdb Associates, on the side. He too has a
vision. "Friends of the cause sit around and write software," he says. "We
have a vote database on every Democrat. The minute I get a vote, it is
formatted and explained in the database, in categories, with attack themes.
`Perks.' `Pay.' `Turns back on working families.' I summarize it. I give it
to the media people. They give it to the campaign manager. They've got their
campaign in a box."

It's an expensive box. Biltmeyer charges $10,000 per study. Garvey,
meanwhile, takes in between $20,000 and $25,000 for his five-tier onslaughts.
This is comparatively cheap. David Hill of the Houston-based Hill Research
Associates bills $100 per hour for projects that stretch out for months.
"There's no way to make it go faster," sighs Hill, who is currently shadowing
Lawton Chiles for Florida gubernatorial hopeful Jeb Bush. "So much
information keeps filtering in. It all requires follow-up work. You're
constantly integrating new material. You can keep following trails until the
sun goes down."

Such persistence is a virtual necessity, says Alex Castellanos of National
Media Inc. "Boring, annoying, wonk-fact ads are bombing. If a politician is
viewed as having his hand in the till, that's what really gets people going.
But for that you have to go through campaign finance documents. Divorce
papers. Tax records. You have to go on-site." That's where the research
divisions of the party committees fall short. "We provide our candidates with
public-record research," says Michael Meahan, spokesman for the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee. "Funny votes and funny quotes. There's a
limit to how much the committees can do."

In the past, candidates in search of juicier fare turned to private
investigators--and the efforts often came back to haunt them. In 1990
Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Jim Loftus was run out of town after news
leaked that he had hired an investigator to look at Governor Tommy Thompson's
relationship with dog track operators. Private eyes, too, have started to
balk at political work. "I won't do it anymore," says Ken Cummins, a
Washington p.i. hired by the Clinton campaign to look into allegations of
impropriety surrounding Bush family finances. "I think a lot of firms feel
the same way. The other side starts doing oppo on you. They look at your
client list and phone records. They figure out who your principals are. You
get investigated."

This is where the new industry comes in. Imagine political consultants'
relief at ceding the muckraking to a team of briefcase-toting professionals.
"We really don't do much opposition research anymore," says Peter Lindstrom,
research director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "We
subcontract it out. We'd rather let the consultants do it." Dan Carroll, a
former dnc research chief who left the committee to start his own oppo firm,
agrees that "the difference is all in how you sell it. When I think of
private eyes, I think of going through people's garbage, invading their
privacy. If you throw around terms like `private eye,' you can make points
against a candidate. If it's an opposition research firm doing it, it's not
as sinister sounding. The issue is how it's done and how it's spun."

Not surprisingly, most of today's opposition researchers see themselves not
as gumshoes, but as gurus. Far from hiding behind trench coats, they promptly
return reporters' phone calls, freely discuss current clients and are
generally more than willing to supply examples of their own clout and guile.
"We're not just looking for dirt," insists Hill. "We provide strategic
insight on how to run a campaign." Adds Garvey: "We see ourselves as
consultants first and researchers second. Campaigns are increasingly coming
to rely on us to do their entire strategic plan."

And some other things, too. "We specialize in the public record," says
Michael Segal of the Advanced Research Group in Cambridge. "Now, that public
record might include controversial records." That's one way of putting it.
"We actually go into courthouses," brags Ray Strother of the Washington-based
Strother Ltd., who ha