Mountains of mud set to fly in presidential race
Support staffs busily mining records for nuggets of negativity
In a downtown Washington office, researchers at a Democratic super PAC pore over Trump University lawsuit filings, reading newspaper clips and even watching old episodes of The Celebrity Apprentice.
Less than 2 miles away, the Republican National Committee’s research staff is busy with more than 500 public records requests about Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton’s tenure in office. Republicans built a text-searchable database of every scrap of video she’s appeared in since the 1980s, and the RNC even posted a staffer in Little Rock for more than a year to make almost daily trips to the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum in the hopes of uncovering damaging information about the former first lady.
The mud is about to fly as Clinton and GOP presumptive nominee Donald Trump grow closer to a general election showdown. Voters are getting a taste of how ugly it will be. In recent days, Trump’s conduct with women and his past use of pseudonyms to masquerade as his own publicist have made front-page news, as have revelations that a Clinton charity helped a for-profit company, partly owned by people with ties to the Clintons.
Trump and his allies have made it clear they consider former president Bill Clinton’s marital infidelities fair game in the election fight. In recent interviews, Trump and his convention manager Paul Manafort sought to cast Clinton as her husband’s “enabler.”
“We are likely to see heaps and heaps of dirt being flung in both directions, partly because these are well-known figures in the public eye,” said Costas Panagopoulos, a visiting professor of political science at Yale University.
Each side claims the upper hand in opposition research.
Republicans say they’ve had the advantage of focusing all their energies on a clear Democratic front-runner in Clinton, while rival researchers in the Democratic Party had to dig up dirt on as many as 17 candidates in a bloated Republican field.
“We’ve been at this for years,” said Raj Shah, who oversees research operations at the RNC and has spent 3½ years probing Clinton’s past, either at the RNC or at America Rising, the Republicans’ outside opposition research arm. He called his effort “the most comprehensive opposition research into a candidate in decades.”
Democrats counter that some of the most damaging material that will be used against Trump comes out of the Republican’s own mouth.
Trump says “so many things that are divisive that it’s hard to find a segment of the electorate that he hasn’t offended,” said Justin Barasky, spokesman for the pro-Clinton Priorities USA Action super PAC that’s readying a blitz of more than $130 million in TV, radio and digital advertising.
“We are likely to see heaps and heaps of dirt being flung in both directions.” Political science professor Costas Panagopoulos