Negative Campaigns Can Hurt-- The Perpetrators

Leave it to EMILY's List to find the most negative candidates anywhere

You know what Democratic primary voters don't like? They don't like negativity against other Democrats. No one minds going negative on Republicans, but sizable numbers of Democrats recoil when Democrats attack other Democrats, especially when they attack women. This has been a career-killing problem for former Republican Wendy Greuel, who seems to have picked up a Rovian strategy of sliming her opponents during her 13 or 14 years as a registered Republican. If her vicious attacks on the well-liked Jan Perry and Eric Garcetti in last year's mayoral race didn't imprint onto the minds of voters that she's toxic, this year's CA-33 congressional race did. As this week's L.A. Weekly pointed out, Greuel's negative approach to politics extended to staff. She hired one of L.A.'s shadiest and most disreputable and radioactive political operatives as her campaign manager, Michael Trujillo.

Trujillo and his team turned the CA-33 into a mud-fest that turned off voters and held turnout down. All the other candidates tried running positive campaigns. Team Greuel, led by Trujillo, Ace Smith, Sue Burnside and EMILY's List, were in negative territory at all times, lashing out against everyone (except frontrunner Elan Carr, the Republican). Greuel was especially vicious in her deceitful attacks on progressives Marianne Williamson and Ted Lieu. Greuel, a careerist hack, doesn't know what a progressive is but she does know its her enemy. Her attacks on Williamson and Lieu-- both of whom are respected, friendly and well-liked in the district that Greuel, a carpetbagger from the Valley, knows nothing about-- lost her the race, the same way her smear machine against Jan Perry and Eric Garcetti lost her the mayor's race. All the same slimy characters too!

On the June 3 primary election night, the Greuel team is feeling confident. Their internal polls have her winning. For good measure, they've dropped some mailers attacking Ted Lieu-- just to "let some air out of Ted's tires," Trujillo explains.

But when the early returns come in, Trujillo and Clegg looks ashen. Former city controller Rick Tuttle is heard singing in a room next door: "Happy days are here again. ... Wendy Greuel is going to win!"

Her victory party in Santa Monica slowly morphs into a wake. Longtime Greuel strategist Sue Burnside mutters, "It's fucking Marianne Williamson! She's taking our fucking votes!"

And, of course, it wasn't just Greuel getting terrible advice and running self-defeating negative campaigns. One of my favorite candidates of the cycle showed me a horrific attack ad he had made denouncing his opponent, a corrupt conservative woman from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, in a 4-way race. The ad was scrupulously factual but stridently negative. I told him it would work to derail her, for sure, but that it was too negative and voters would be repulsed and turn away from him and towards one of the other candidates. He ran it anyway-- and it did exactly what I predicted it would. A third candidate reaped the benefits as my friend and his target both sunk precipitously in the minds of the voters.