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By ALICIA CALDWELL
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 2, 2000
Brace yourself.
A check of your mailbox today -- the last regular mail delivery before Tuesday's primary election -- ought to answer definitively whether local political campaigns have evolved from the mudslides of recent years.
As you sift through the political pieces, keep in mind this guiding principle: The nastier the vitriol, the more likely you are hearing from candidates who sense they are behind and will do just about anything to get your vote. The same thing goes for phone calls.
Yes, it's desperation you're smelling, and voters have found it increasingly unattractive.
The effect so far is that, while a few Pinellas candidates have gotten critical, most have stopped just short of negative.
"Everybody's being so careful about negative campaigns and the reactions they evoke," said Myrtle Smith-Carroll, a Democratic state and national committeewoman from St. Petersburg. "Although they say negative approaches work, I think they're all afraid to be the first to do it."
The key to the Saturday mail-bomb tactic is that opponents will have no time to counter with their own political mailings.
"But there's time for a negative voter reaction," said Smith-Carroll.
Negative ads seem to have drawn more backlash in recent years, no matter when they reach voters.
That's the conventional wisdom on how Mary Brennan blew a 15-point lead in the polls and managed to lose to Jim Sebesta two years ago in the District 20 state Senate race.
Brennan, a Democrat, mailed out a flier claiming Sebesta favored a school voucher plan that would give tax dollars to schools run by cults, including Hare Krishnas.
Though it came before the last-minute negative ad drops, the flier is thought to have given Sebesta the edge in a tight race. The Sebesta camp responded by taping and airing a 30-second television ad featuring Sebesta's wife, Jean, who described how much Brennan's ad hurt. Sebesta won by 3,400 votes -- 52 percent to 48 percent.
In a post-mortem appearance several weeks after the election, Brennan took responsibility for the ad and acknowledged the damage it did to her campaign. She said she got about 30 e-mails, telephone messages and letters -- a huge reaction and not a good one.
Forecasting the possible negative maneuvers and devising countermoves during the last week of any campaign is enough to keep political strategists up at night.
"This is what we call the hand-to-hand combat phase," said consultant Mary Repper. "We're fighting like dogs right down to the end."
Repper said she's contemplating how to reach voters, if necessary, with hand bills at polling places as well as last-minute television and radio ads to counter negative attacks in the close races she's handling.
"Anything negative, nasty coming out, you know it's coming from the people who are behind," Repper said.
Not everyone, however, agrees on what is nasty and negative.
Rockie Pennington, who runs Direct Mail Systems in Clearwater, in discussing the shades of gray in negative campaigning, posed a question: Is it "negative" to bring up a legislative candidate's previous bankruptcies and tax liens if that person wants a hand in putting together a state budget? Or is it fair criticism?
Funny how when people try to describe negative campaigning, they frequently fall back the oft-quoted comment made by the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart about his difficulty in defining pornography. "I know it when I see it," Stewart said.
So, as you check your mailbox today and scrutinize the last-minute mailings, keep in mind the machinations at play. And make sure you vote on Tuesday.