Researcher shines harsh light on Democrats
Republican bombards media with messages about opposition
By Howard Kurtz
THE WASHINGTON POST
Monday, February 17, 2003
WASHINGTON -- If you read political news stories or watch political talk shows, chances are you've come across Tim Griffin's handiwork.
He funnels facts to thousands of journalists, from Tim Russert and Sam Donaldson to the nation's top newspaper reporters, all of which cast people of the Democratic persuasion in the harshest possible light.
As the man in charge of investigating the opposition, the Republican National Committee research chief blasts his findings to the entire press corps in mass e-mailings, then sits back and watches the negative stuff spread like a computer virus. When Joe Lieberman, John Kerry, John Edwards and Howard Dean announced their presidential candidacies, Griffin and his staff flooded media in-boxes with derogatory information.
"National GOP attacks Dean as `ultraliberal' Vermonter," the Burlington (Vt.) Free Press reported.
"GOP Web Site Attacks Kerry's '04 Candidacy," the Boston Globe said.
"Less than four hours after Lieberman's announcement," the Hartford (Conn.) Courant said, "the GOP fired its first -- well, shot, but it was more like a bazooka than a bullet."
"Basically, it's their record," said Griffin, who reluctantly agreed to discuss his normally secretive work in his Capitol Hill office, adorned with a large whiteboard with Democratic candidate schedules scrawled in marker. "Their votes, their interest group ratings -- it's hard to spin those."
But of course, spin is the whole point, which is why the documents trumpet such headlines as "Political Gymnast Joe Lieberman Catches Gore-Itis" and "Who Is John Edwards? An Unaccomplished Liberal in Moderate Clothing and a Friend to His Fellow Personal Injury Trial Lawyers."
"Their relentless spamming is clearly part of a flagrant effort to distort the Democratic field into simple negative caricatures," Lieberman spokesman Jano Cabrera said. "I think most reporters realize that their barbs aren't worth the bandwidth they're e-mailed on."
Sue Allen, Dean's spokeswoman, is dismissive: "We don't take it seriously. It is at best misleading and out of context. At worst, it's downright wrong and fiction."
The anti-Edwards memo was shown on CNN's "Inside Politics." Jennifer Palmieri, Edwards' spokeswoman, said the senator's camp "was flattered to be the first one the RNC sent a major missive attacking. We don't think it's going to have any real impact other than providing further evidence that John Edwards is the candidate that gives the Republicans the willies."
Griffin, 34, is a low-key Arkansan who served as a federal prosecutor in Little Rock and was a deputy to Barbara Comstock, now the Justice Department's spokeswoman. Armed with a seemingly encyclopedic memory, he has a lawyer's knack for making a case, and as an Army reservist, he understands trench warfare.
"There's information that is readily available and information that is not easily discoverable," said Griffin, sitting at his flat-screen computer with a Scooby-Doo mouse pad. Sometimes that means sending his staff -- whose size he won't disclose -- to dig up microfilm and other public records.
The Democratic National Committee also puts out opposition research -- such as an 80-page rebuttal to President Bush's State of the Union speech -- but doesn't regularly pepper journalists with such attacks. The Democratic group, which has no communications director or press secretary at the moment, operates on a smaller budget.
"I don't think that kind of widespread dissemination is terribly effective," said a Democratic committee official who declined to be quoted by name. "We've found it's much more effective to work with individual reporters on stories."
But to GOP consultant Alex Castellanos, the rapid responses sent to 15,000 activists and opinion leaders is important.
"It used to be that research was a kid in the campaign. Now you have some of the brightest legal minds in Washington -- and Tim is a hugely bright fellow -- and a really powerful tool to get our side of the story out on the table," Castellanos said. "With the vast left-wing media conspiracy, we haven't had much chance to make our voice heard."
Griffin often gets his licks in on the Sunday shows. When Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe appeared on ABC's "This Week" last summer from Las Vegas, Donaldson told him that "a Republican source has faxed to every news organization in town a blistering attack on you." ABC even showed the headline: "McAuliffe: Too Much Time Adrift in the Nevada Sun?"
"I love it when the Republicans come out and attack me," McAuliffe said. "Then I know I'm doing my job right."
On "Meet the Press" in 2001, Russert asked Tom Daschle about a GOP memo complaining that the Senate Democratic leader had raised money by inviting donors to tour Mount Rushmore.
Russert said both parties and all manner of think tanks send him material.
"We're inundated with folks trying to get their research to us. We sort it out and screen it," he said. "It's always helpful because it triggers ideas. But sometimes you go back to the original source, and it's less than complete. You have to be very careful because it has a slant, as you might expect."
The attack on Edwards, for example, cites his record ("Voted with Senator Ted Kennedy 90 Percent of the Time"), polls ("Suffers from Extremely Low Name Recognition") and fund raising ("More Than 4 of Every 5 Dollars . . . Have Come from Personal Injury Trial Lawyers").
But the first of many news citations is from Marc Rotterman in The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C. He is not identified in the e-mail as a Republican strategist.
The e-mail venture, which began four years ago, was the subject of a British Broadcasting Corp. documentary during the 2000 campaign. "Our philosophy is, the more people who know about it, the better," Republican committee communications chief Jim Dyke said. "There's no need to be secretive about it."
Timing is everything. When the Democratic Leadership Council staged its convention last summer, a Washington Post story noted in the lead that "it was Republicans who fired off the first talking point." The piece said that the Republican committee memo was "a selective reading of history with the partisan goal of trying to claim the center of the political spectrum for the GOP." But Griffin still had managed to infiltrate a story about the Democrats.
Why don't reporters do their own research? They are usually busy, working on multiple stories, and don't have staffs at their disposal, as Griffin does. That's why he makes the memos easy for distracted journalists to digest and check.
"The trust thing is critical," Griffin said. "When you say a quote is a quote, it has to be a quote." |
