Like Mollohan and Michael Steele, Republican Sen. Rick Santorum has tried to turn his opponent's negative campaigning against him. He has not had much success. Santorum has faced persistent questions about whether he and his family reside in Pennsylvania, as he claims. Actually, it would be more accurate to say he has persistently ducked those questions, declaring that such matters are not worth discussing.
Santorum did not always feel that way. When he first ran for the House of Representatives in 1990, he claimed that the longtime Democratic incumbent, Doug Walgren, did not live in the Pittsburgh district he represented. Instead, Santorum charged, the congressman kept his wife and kids with him in their home in D.C.'s Virginia suburbs. Walgren responded that he used his lifelong Pittsburgh residence for voting and taxes but that a member of Congress should keep his young family close to where he works. In a Pittsburgh debate Santorum, then a 32-year-old lawyer making his first bid for public office, said, "We're going to raise our family here."
Santorum won that race in an upset and was elected to the Senate four years later, again beating an incumbent Democrat. In the upper chamber Santorum quickly earned a reputation as a partisan brawler, stressing his opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion and championing other socially conservative issues of the day. "He's got an in-your-face style, argumentative and pugnacious, which does offend some people," notes G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. "He's divisive. He's not a consensus builder."
Now, after a dozen years of Santorum's take-no-prisoners political combat, Democrats are in full battle mode against him. Santorum faces Democratic nominee Bob Casey Jr., son of a popular former governor, whose pro-life, anti–gun control, and economically populist positions dovetail with the views of most Pennsylvania voters. (See "Penn Statists," page 14.) But public policy has been only one element in the campaign. The question of Santorum's residency is also a prominent issue. Critics contend that the senator, who did not hesitate to slam Walgren for pretending to live in Pennsylvania, does not reside at the suburban Pittsburgh address he claims.
It's valid to question whether a senator lives in the state he represents, especially if the senator in question has a history of arguing that the issue is important. Yet Santorum has tried to dismiss the matter as negative campaigning and has pointed his finger back at his accusers, turning the issue of residency into one of snooping on private property.
The controversy has been bubbling for two years, since Democrats began charging that Santorum actually lives in Leesburg, Virginia, with his wife and six children. Neighbors say they rarely see the senator or his wife and kids at their Penn Hills, Pennsylvania, house. Based on such reports, some Penn Hills residents objected to the local school district's paying for the senator's children to be enrolled in a cyber charter school.
Critics gathered more ammunition against Santorum in March, when the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sent letters to the candidates seeking materials for its voter guide. A letter addressed to Santorum at his listed Penn Hills address came back with a note from the U.S. Postal Service saying "Not Deliverable as Addressed—Unable to Forward." The most recent contretemps over the residency issue began on May 16, the day of the primary elections, when Ed Vecchio, the husband of the Penn Hills Democratic Party chairwoman, said of Santorum: "He doesn't live here. The house that he's registered to vote out of is vacant—no curtains, furniture, nothing in there. It's abandoned for over a month."
Rather than confronting the merits of the charge, Santorum claimed that such information could be gleaned only by trespassing on his property. He fingered Vecchio as an operative of the Casey campaign, although there was no evidence of any coordination. He ran radio ads denouncing the alleged trespassing episode, or "windowgate," as local wags refer to it. Santorum's wife, Karen, then called Capitol Police, who protect members of Congress; the Capitol Police, in turn, contacted police in Penn Hills, who checked out the home and declared it safe. Democrats called the trespassing charge a diversionary tactic aimed at deflecting attention from the issue of the senator's residency.
As with Steele's Senate campaign, the questions about Santorum do not disqualify him from office. Voters can decide for themselves if their senator's main home should be in the state he represents. The issue is not clear-cut: Pennsylvania law anticipates that members of Congress will live out of state most of the year. Santorum and his wife both hold Pennsylvania driver's licenses and are licensed to practice law in the Keystone State. "The question Santorum faces is political, not legal," says Madonna, the Franklin & Marshall political scientist. "What does it mean to live there? It's not been defined."
That's a question Pennsylvania voters will help answer in November. It's better that they have the fullest possible information when reaching a conclusion.
Under Fire
In the Pennsylvania and Maryland Senate races and West Virginia's 1st Congressional District campaign, the closing days of the election cycle will undoubtedly be filled with waves of hard-edged television attack ads, vicious blog posts, and direct-mail mudslinging. These aggressive tactics not only will bring to the fore important issues but may also shed light on the character of political aspirants. The way candidates respond to negative campaign tactics can be an indicator of how they would perform in public office. If they wilt under attacks or fail to respond to charges, it may be a sign they would not perform particularly well in the rough and tumble of elected office.
That, too, will be for the electorate to decide. The history of political campaigns shows that when candidates present clear, stark differences between themselves and opponents, citizens are better able to judge whom to support. When those lines are drawn sharply in harsh, tough ads and attacks in the press, it's the voters who win.
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|10.29.10 @ 10:56AM|#
I've long said that there is a difference between "negative advertising" or "attack ads" and "comparative advertising".
I would call the ads about Michael Steele's financial woes "comparative advertising". His opponents were merely making public facts about his past that may not be widely known, and it's up to the voters to decide if those facts have any bearing on his suitability for office.
I would call LBJ's famous "Daisy" ad an "Attack Ad", because it did not use any actual facts about Goldwater. It merely made a grotesque accusation about the opponent without providing any evidence to back it up.
For another example, take the ads against Michael Dukakis. To me, promoting the facts about Dukakis and Willie Horton qualifies as "comparative". But making accusations about "revolving door prisons" arguably crosses the line to become an "attack".
Truthful facts are never off-limits, but unsubstantiated hyperbole sometimes should be.
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