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Candidates go where the votes are. This is a useful guide for covering candidates for local and state offices, less so for candidates for the major national offices because television takes their campaigns into homes everywhere. The reporter covering a mayoral or gubernatorial campaign who watches the candidates' schedules for the week can draw some informed conclusions. Where does the candidate go, how often and on what terms? When a Jewish candidate spends most of his time in the Catholic areas of town, one conclusion may be drawn. If he gives a large part of his time to appearances at synagogues and Jewish organizations, another conclusion may he drawn. TV Tips Watch the media purchases. If the candidate is buying television near daytime soap operas, he or she is looking for the homemaker's vote. Watch candidates' TV ads. For voters, these ads are a major part of the campaign. Some newspapers audit the candidates' commercials, checking for exaggerations, distortion and negative campaigning as well as for their stands on issues. Joyce Purnick, metropolitan editor of The New York Times, recalls asking her editor when she was a political reporter if she could write about a Senate candidate's TV ads "because they were filled with provable errors and half-truths. I'll never forget the editor's answer: 'That's for his opponents to do; not us.'" No longer. Behind the Lines Campaigns are carefully planned. Ralph Whitehead of the University of Massachusetts says, "It is possible to read a campaign. Assume that every decision is made for a reason. A reporter's job is to do the decoding." When Hillary Clinton ran for the U.S. Senate from New York her campaign staff understood that mention of her name stirred a reaction, sometimes violent. At one time, a poll found her to be the most disliked woman in the country. The strategy: turn attention away from her to issues. She was to be boring, conventional, non-provocative. Reporters complained, but she won easily. It was the reporter's job, which some fulfilled well, to reveal this strategy. They may not have liked not getting inflammatory rhetoric that makes for page 1 stories and the lead for the 6 p.m. local news broadcast, but they did settle for stories about the strategy of the Clinton campaign. When she and her opponent avoided issues the reporters asked them about it. They were not passive. Reportorial Agenda When candidates play it safe and steer away from issues that could cost them votes, the journalist has no choice but to act. The journalist is obligated to press candidates to declare themselves on issues the journalist considers important. Reporters cannot play stenographer to those seeking votes. John Herbers, a veteran political reporter, suggests that reporters and their editors draw up "a list of issues they believe are important to the coverage." If the candidates ignores these issues, Herbers says he sees "nothing wrong with writing that 'Candidate X opened his campaign with a long speech that detailed a list of problems he sees facing the nation. But he did not mention racial divisions, which many see as a growing threat to the country.'" Although Herbers was addressing campaigns for national office, his advice applies to all elections—mayor, city council, school board. Issues, important issues, need to be addressed in all campaigns. Follow the Buck Whose money fuels the candidates' campaigns? It's easy to find out, because all states require financial disclosure in state and federal races. Some states demand reports as often as every two weeks before the election. Political action committees are large donors. PACs favor incumbents. A study showed they donate 10 times as much to House incumbents as to their challengers. "Money follows power" is a political axiom. When the Democrats controlled Congress, military contractors donated 60 percent of their funds to that party. When the Republicans took over, the contractors shifted, donating 70 percent of their political funds to the GOP. PACs and other large donors are not giving from the goodness of their hearts. They want favorable legislation. In the Nebraska legislature, for example, the PAC of the state's 4,000 liquor retailers wanted a "No" vote on a bill that would require bars to post signs warning that drinking during pregnancy could cause birth defects. On the legislative committee considering the bill, legislators who opposed it had received an average of 53 percent more in PAC contributions than did the legislators who voted for the bill. Thomas Winship, former editor of the Boston Globe, suggested that it should be a matter of "routine coverage for all newspapers to print an updated financial profile of each member of their congressional delegation before they go to Washington for an upcoming session." He sais such an accounting can be had from the Federal Elections Commission and the Center for Responsive Politics, both in Washington, D.C. The Center publishes a handbook, Follow the Money, by Larry Makinson that is designed to help reporters set up databases to relate campaign donations to a politician's votes. Tax Cuts One of the favored political pledges is to cut taxes. Fair enough; nobody likes taxes. But the candidate has to be asked what will happen when these revenues are not going into government. What services will be cut? Spending, the candidate replies. The journalist seeks specifics: Spending on what? On the police department? On education? On the child immunization program? No, we won't have to cut, says the candidate, because we have a plan to attract new industry and business. Better ask for the specifics of the candidate's plan. Several of these plans, much heralded at their inceptions, turned out to be less than advertised. One such was the idea of lowering taxes or cutting them altogether to attract new industry and business. Industries were attracted, and they hired workers. Fine, so far. But the workers have children who crowded into already stretched schools. The result: In Texas, a state senate committee estimated the loss in tax revenues of half a billion dollars to the schools over a decade. In Cleveland, the teachers union said, abatements had cost the hard-pressed school tax system $21 million. In Rio Rancho, N.M., the city and state gave Intel Corp. $114 million in tax breaks and incentives to attract the microchip maker. Intel moved in, as did workers and their children, who had to be bused to Albuquerque schools. After the situation got out of hand, Intel agreed to pay for a new high school in Rio Rancho. Women Leaders Many women occupy what is known as leadership roles in state government. They hold 35 percent of such positions, up from 28 percent five years before. Women hold 44 percent of the jobs as advisers to governors and are at the head of 31 percent of state agencies.
"We want you to deliver. This is what we want and we're going to demand it. We want to be team players. But it's time for us to start leading the team." The words were addressed to 100 Christian Coalition members by Pat Robertson, the head of the Coalition. He told them to take the message to their members of Congress. The Coalition and about a dozen other groups that constitute the Religious Right have become more outspoken, more organized, more influential. They issue magazines and newspapers, sponsor radio and television shows. They have in common an agenda that is anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-sex education and that is abstinence-based. Some favor vouchers and tax credits for religious education, a school prayer constitutional amendment, and censorship of school books. Here are some Web site addresses for these organizations:
For material on positions opposite those of the Religious Right, here are the names of several organizations and their Web sites:
Political Tidbits Definition Ambrose Bierce defined politics as a "strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles." John Kenneth Galbraith said, "Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable." Axiom Government reacts to the interplay of pressure groups in setting policy rather than constructing policy from an agenda. Voter Preferences A Roper Poll shows voters want more coverage of issues, less on the personal lives of candidates, more on how elections affect their lives, less emphasis on the front runners. The Electorate "Half the American people never read a newspaper. Half never vote for president. One hopes it is the same half."—Gore Vidal Go to the People David Broder of The Washington Post advises journalists, "The campaign is really the property of the voters. We should be spending a lot of time with voters. Literally, spending time with voters—walking precincts, knocking on doors, talking to people in their living rooms. What I am talking about is a serious, conscientious reporting effort to determine what the voter's concerns are, and then letting that agenda drive our coverage." Key Elements David Yepsen of The Des Moines Register says there are four elements to a political campaign: the candidate, the money, the issues and the organization. Coverage of each involves:
Sexism A study of 311 news stories about political campaigns found that reporters tend to focus on the personality, appearance and family life of female candidates, whereas they emphasized the positions on issues of the male candidates they covered. To the Point "I think it's about time we voted for senators with real breasts. After all, we've been voting for boobs long enough."— Claire Sargent, Arizona senatorial candidate. (She lost.) |
