I got plenty more evidence this past week about how much people still read the paper.
While I am one of those people fighting the national thinking that “nobody reads papers anymore,” I certainly find out how false that is when I write something that has a bit of controversy involved. Believe me, people are reading the paper, and especially The Slidell Independent and Tammany West.
Last week in this space I discussed what I called “negative campaign” ads. Something I saw my fair share of, or heard on the radio, during the past month as campaigning got more intense in advance of the Oct. 24 elections.
I mentioned several candidates in St. Tammany Parish who, in my opinion, used those tactics and then I referenced a number of particular ads.
I singled out District 1 Senate candidate Sharon Hewitt for what I saw as a series of attacks on her opponent Pete Schneider and specifically mentioned one direct mail flyer that likened him to a pig in talking about how much his actions “stunk.” That attack was among the lowest I had seen.
I do need to correct that particular reference since the direct mail flyer sent out on behalf of Hewitt, particularly the pig one, was not sent out by Hewitt, or by her advertising firm, Innovative Advertising LLC, based in Mandeville.
That particular flyer was sent out by a PAC group—Louisiana Lawsuit Fairness PAC—and according to Hewitt, she did not see it nor have any knowledge of what they were going to send out. So I do apologize to Hewitt and Innovative for linking them to that flyer.
Innovative and Hewitt did send other direct mail pieces that targeted various actions by Schneider, mostly during his days as a state representative, saying that he was “Profiting Off Politics,” that he “took nearly $200,000 in a taxpayer funded pension,” and that he used taxpayer dollars to take a vacation. They blamed him for voting to raise taxes in the state by $1.4 billion and for creating a taxpayer “time bomb” for being in office during a time that the state’s retirement plan was in a financial mess. Hewitt and an Innovative spokesman said they believed their campaign was “tasteful, accurate and respectful.”
There were other candidates I mentioned who also took part in what I saw as negative campaign attacks and not surprisingly, there were many more I could have talked about.
I got more response to this column than anything I have written in years, and the vast majority of the calls or e-mails were in support of me pointing out this situation. The only calls or e-mails I got from those who had a problem with what I wrote were from people who I had mentioned, or who were involved in the campaigns, and I do understand that when I said Hewitt and Innovative were involved in the pig flyer that I owed them an apology.
With that said, I still do not change my opinion on negative campaigning, but in discussing it with one candidate I think it clarified where the difference of opinion falls—we all have our own opinion of what truly would be called “negative campaigning.” If you looked at all campaigning and rated it on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of negativity there is clearly a vast difference in how it is viewed by each of us.
I think a candidate can point out differences in where they stand on an issue and where someone else stands, and that is not negative. But the real problem to me is that it is so easy for a candidate or agency to take true information and spin it to make a candidate look bad.
For instance: Did Pete Schneider really create the “time bomb” of the state retirement problem in Louisiana? No, he didn’t. That issue has been around for years and is hardly something Schneider could have fixed by himself. I have done stories with Kevin Pearson, who heads the state retirement committee in the Legislature, and believe me, this problem is not going to be solved easily by anyone, and it is a problem that has taken years to get to the bad situation that it currently is.
But yes, Schneider was in office during that time so it was accurate to say he had some kind of connection to it. Is that a spin? I’ll let you decide.
I could dissect other ads, as I did previously in mentioning the way a specific slice of crime stats were pulled by the Sheriff’s Office to highlight a year when Slidell had five murders. When comparing crime stats that included those years, and not a very wide time period, it was accurate to show the city had a high crime rate during that span of years. But over the past 10 years the city has seen an overall decrease in crime.
Let’s face it, we all know that political campaigns are ripe for smart agency people to find a way to spin issues in their favor. It’s part of the game and any candidate getting in the race has to know that.
But from this corner I can’t stand to see an otherwise good, upstanding individual have their reputation smeared from political campaigning. It is happening in a rampant way through anonymous Facebook tactics, and it is also done with legitimate, still factual, campaign advertising.
Campaigns can still be run in a clean way. Slidell Judge Jim Lamz proved that in his last election when he was attacked in what he called a “vicious” way, but refused to join in. He ran his campaign simply by promoting his good qualities, and then in overwhelming fashion.
That’s an example more candidates could learn from and for myself, I would like it see it happen more often.
Kevin Chiri can be reached by e-mail at kevinchiri@gmail.com.