The Santa Barbara News-Press (Calif.) - Negative campaigning element of S.B. County political landscape

From blistering mailers in 3rd District supervisorial races to television commercials by a mega-millionaire challenger attacking the integrity of a longtime congressman, negative campaigning is no stranger to Santa Barbara County politics.

Although experts predict such mudslinging will continue here and elsewhere -- especially in high-stakes races where the outcome is in doubt -- they disagree about whether campaign broadsides are more likely to harm or help the aggressor.

That question takes on renewed significance because of a Pedro Nava television ad in which the Democratic candidate for state Assembly attacks his Republican opponent's record on the Santa Barbara school board. As the screen fills with pictures of rundown schools that aren't in Santa Barbara, Mr. Nava's ad accuses Bob Pohl of running up "huge deficits" during his four years as a board member, a claim angrily disputed last week by school officials, many of whom are Pohl supporters.

Ripping into an opponent rather than highlighting the candidate's own positive qualities is an approach more frequently used in big cities such as Los Angeles or San Francisco, political pundits note. But it happens here, and candidates occasionally hit below the belt in their quests to get elected.

Examples abound. For instance, multimillionaire Michael Huffington self-financed a $3.5 million campaign that wrenched the Republican nomination away from 18-year congressman Robert Lagomarsino in June 1994, largely through a relentless barrage of television commercials citing the incumbent's "problems" and attacking his integrity.

Mr. Huffington, then of Montecito, went on to win the 22nd Congressional District seat that fall and two years later spent $29 million unsuccessfully battling Democrat Dianne Feinstein for her seat in the U.S. Senate. After a campaign highlighted by intense personal attacks on both sides, the final tally showed only 165,562 votes separating the two candidates, less than 2 percent.

"When the stakes go up, that's when you start to see more negative campaigning," said Eric R. Smith, a UCSB political science professor and registered Democrat. "It's the challengers in high-end races that are more likely to do that."

He cited what he called a "horribly negative" election fight in 2002 between Republican challenger Beth Rogers and heavily favored incumbent Congresswoman Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, who was re-elected. Ms. Rogers, he surmised, "probably figured the only chance to win was to go negative" in the solidly Democratic district.

Although she failed to unseat the incumbent, the approach may have gained Ms. Rogers more votes than she would have received otherwise, he said.

"Negative campaigning works. That's why people do it," he added, citing research showing that voters are swayed more by negatives about a candidate than by positive information, even though the mud may leave a bad taste. He doesn't think that's changed much in the past two decades, either.

"The voters have never liked it," he said. "They don't like the bickering, but they respond to it. We're still going to see stuff like that."

Negative campaign ads "appeal to the worst part of our human nature," yet often are effective, as long as they don't go too far, said John Davies, a longtime political and public relations consultant, who has developed such hard-hitting advertising strategies for numerous local campaigns.

"The reason that there is negative advertising is because it works," he added. "Almost every really tough, contested race, you're going to get some kind of slugfest going on."

Richard Cochrane of Santa Barbara, a Republican political consultant who has worked on hundreds of campaigns during the past two decades, has a different view.

"Negative campaigning is at best a double-edged sword," he said. "A lot of people cut their own heads off, politically speaking, on the backswing."

He has only seen candidates elected using negative campaigning in a small fraction of races, Mr. Cochrane said. "People aren't stupid. They want to know why they should vote for you. My general conclusion is that if you try to win by tearing somebody else down, chances are you're not going to prevail."

Some experts say the jury is still out on how negative campaigning affects voter behavior. While some research shows it turns off voters and lowers turnout, there is no consensus among political scientists on whether it helps candidates win, said Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta, Ga.

In Santa Barbara County, some of the most bitter campaigns have been for 3rd District county supervisor. That seat represents a diverse region straddling both sides of the Santa Ynez mountains, with the South Coast's environmentalism and social causes often pitched against the North County's more conservative interests.

"Both sides have been fairly negative in the fights for the 3rd District," Professor Smith observed. "Unfortunately, it's a district in which two cultures are clashing. There are very sharp political divisions in that district."

Since 1992, when longtime county supervisor and environmentalist torchbearer Bill Wallace was challenged by Santa Ynez rancher Willy Chamberlin, 3rd District campaigns have been particularly nasty. The stakes are high, since the balance of power on the Board of Supervisors has been up for grabs.

Mr. Chamberlin initially won that bitterly fought race by a handful of votes. Mr. Wallace demanded a recount that narrowed the margin, but the result didn't change. He then sued, and a state appeals court ruled, about 18 months after the election, that several disputed ballots had been improperly counted, reinstating Mr. Wallace for the remainder of the four-year term.

His successor, county Supervisor Gail Marshall, has also come under strong attack from her North County opponents during the past eight years, but never more so than when she successfully fought off their effort to recall her last year.

The acrimony didn't die down for long. After Ms. Marshall announced she would not seek re-election, the three-man race to succeed her quickly got personal. Campaign "hit pieces" were mailed out by the eventual winner, Supervisor-elect Brooks Firestone, against opponents John Buttny and Steve Pappas. That approach was advised by Mr. Davies and defended during the campaign by Mr. Firestone, who insisted the mailers' negative information was based on public records that are "fair game" as political ammunition.

"This is what campaigns are about," he remarked then. "It's the way it's done. I stand by it."

Besides blaming Mr. Buttny for traffic jams on Highway 101 and the formation of three new cities, the fliers blasted him "for being divisive, inflexible and an extremist. He even refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance at a public meeting just weeks after the September 11 attacks" -- an accusation Mr. Buttny flatly denied.

"The negative campaigning in that race was pretty pronounced," Mr. Buttny recalled Thursday.

"I guess you could say it worked. But I think one of the reasons it worked was the amount of money spent" by Mr. Firestone. Campaign finance reports show that Mr. Firestone raised more than $500,000 and outspent Mr. Buttny by a large margin.

While voters often say they are fed up with negative campaigning, the statistics prove otherwise, according to Karla Leeper, an associate professor and interim chair of communication studies at Baylor University. "The public doesn't like negativity in the abstract, but when the candidate goes negative, his numbers jump" in the polls, she stated in the September issue of the Baylor Alumni Association newsletter.