You Don’t Fool Me: Candidates ARE responsible for the tone of their Campaign

I was working late on a research paper last night when some one from Bitterpoliticz sent me to HireHeels to give a  word of support to Paula Abeles’ response to the threats she’s been receiving from overzealous Obama supporters. Here’s the link:

http://hireheels.com/blog/2008/06/21/paula-abeles-responds-to-daily-kos-racist-attacks/

I wrote an immediate, supportive response because I know how it feels.  Back in the year of the woman, I ran for the Nebraska unicameral.  I was a republican back then and basically had the squeakiest clean of normal lives.  The problem was I was a pro-choice republican woman and the anti-choice side will have none of that.

The seat was held by an anti-choice democratic man at the time I ran.  He was a powerful incumbent.  He choose not to run after I successfully pulled a lot of support away from him by doing basic grass roots work.  No one knew he wasn’t running for re-election until a day before the final filing date expired.  Labor scrambled and came up with a very weak candidate.  A trial lawyer signed up.  All the usual types of special interest candidates were on the ballot.  There were a total of 7 of us during the primary. The anti-choice folks found a beautician who had lived in the state for six months that began the run as a simple housewife.  I won the primary handily.  I continued knocking on doors and talking to people.  I never changed my positions, my image, or my promises.

The general election was a different story. It was the ugliest, nastiest dirty campaign and you’d have thought Rove was running it.  By the time it was over, I was having nightmares and afraid to walk in my own neighborhood.  This candidate not only completely remade herself into a small business person, but an incredibly large number of people with serious personality and emotional disorders were running amok in my kid’s schools, in my church, in my neighborhood.  There were whisper campaigns, hateful things said from evangelical church pulpits, and phone calls every night to my answering machine explaining where my small children had been that day and exactly which abortion procedure would be applied to them if the caller had their way.  I had to deal with the newspaper calling me up and asking me if I’d been fired from a teller job in college for stealing money (complete fabrication on ALL accounts).  My good pictures all disappeared mysteriously from their files and the only one that they had left to run was one  of me when I had just recovered from inoperable cancer and looked exactly like I’d been sick for two years.  The evangelical churches bussed folks into the state from surrounding areas to make my life a living hell.  All because I was a pro-choice woman republican candidate.

After that experience, I moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota and re-registered democrat.  I had lost the election by a small margin,but the impact it had on my life was not marginal.  Folks that I had gone to school with since I was a kid were no longer speaking to me.

I had tons of donated money and support in that campaign because my opponent was so out of her league and so far to the right that she scared every interest group from the firefighters and policemen to the bankers.  She ran her campaign with her own funds and some support from the Biker anti-helmet crowd, truckers (her husband was one), and the anti-choice movement.  I never ran ONE negative ad.  Believe me, I even had the money to do tv ads and I could’ve done it.  I told my campaigners to stay out of her immediate neighborhood and focus on my message which was basically one of economic development and re-doing the tax structure of Nebraska.  I made it clear I wanted to sit on the expenditures committee and that I had no plans of staying in there once I’d worked on these things because I had a successful consulting firm and wanted to return to it.  I kept waiting for the press to do some research, but all they were interested in was starting a cat fight on the choice issue between two women.  (It was the first time two women had come through the primary in the state, you’d have thought they’d have better things to focus on.)

If a campaign goes hyper negative and acts hyper angry and incensed all the time, it attracts emotionally damaged people and  simply hypes them into a frenzy.  The candidate may get an ego charge from all that worship, but that frenzy will turn on the opposition’s campaign.  Innocent people will experience threats of violence for just doing their thing as an U.S. citizen.  This kind of evil is a DIRECT reflection on the character of the candidate.  A candidate calls the shots and can reel back the attack dogs.  A candidate can be honest about who they are and what they stand for or they can let their campaign remake them and sell them like a can of soup.  A candidate may say they have no control over their minions, but that is NOT true.  The character of the candidate is ALWAYS THE ISSUE and always at the center of ANY decision.  If you see a campaign doing questionable things, it is because that candidate has questionable character.  As an example, the race-baiting started with the Obama campaign.  They have a pattern.  Take an innocent comment, some surrogate blows it out of proportion and labels it racist.  Obama comes out a few days later to say, ah no, maybe not.  But by then, the damage is done.  By then, the angry, whipped up mob has gone into attack mode and the damage is done to innocent people.

Paula, I am so sorry for what you are going through.  It’ll end.  Right now, you’re living a nightmare and that means your children will too.  But just think, if you stop now, your country, OUR country will be living that nightmare for at least 4 years.   You are my hero.

Senator Barrack Obama … YOU DO NOT FOOL ME and you didn’t fool 18 million other voters.  Call off your attack dogs.