Negative Campaigning

DES MOINES, Iowa -- For a year now, former Sen. Bill Bradley has been insisting that he will stay on the high road in his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination against Vice President Al Gore. Here in Iowa, that commitment is meeting a stiff test, as Gore hammers Bradley on past Senate votes that the vice president says show an insensitivity to farmers' needs. Gore's assertion in their debate here Saturday that Bradley voted in 1993 against disaster relief for Iowa flood victims has thrown Bradley on the defensive.

CHICAGO -- Precinct captains stood outside nearly empty polling places. They looked at their lists and checked off names. They got people rides to the polls. They got baby sitters for voters' children. They slipped reminders on people's front porches and palm cards in their hands.They got doors slammed in their faces and weak promises from voters who vowed they would vote but did not.By the end of Election Day in a city where politics is a blood sport more important than even baseball, less than half of the voters had cast ballots for state and congressional races that politicians said could change the face of Washington.

Their assessment was sweeping and sure: Bill Clinton won it. President Bush was a disappointment. Ross Perot was nothing but lightweight comic relief. And, wonder of wonders in this overheated season of charge and countercharge, the candidates actually talked about the issues, occasionally even in some detail.That was the assessment last night from a panel of eight #F Baltimore-area voters who watched the first of three presidential debates together at the invitation of the Baltimore Sun, after being selected from random telephone calls by House Market Research Inc. of Potomac.

Wrapping up their fall convention, Maryland Republican officials came up with four words of advice yesterday for their presidential nominee, Bob Dole: "Take the gloves off."With 10 days to go before the election and Dole behind in the polls by double digits, many GOP activists urged their champion to zero in on Clinton's character and allegations of wrongdoing in the White House."Go negative. Hit the character issue. Don't be so afraid of offending these pantywaists," said Al Bullock, a member of the Montgomery County Central Committee, when asked what he would tell Dole.

Former two-term Anne Arundel County Executive Janet S. Owens announced Wednesday that she will not seek a return to the office. Owens, a Democrat who served from 1998 to 2007, had been considering a challenge to County Executive John R. Leopold, a Republican who filed for re-election last week. Joanna Conti, a Democrat and business executive from Annapolis, is also running. Owens, 66, said a number of factors shaped her decision, including polls showing that her road to victory would require negative campaigning.

Republican Ellen R. Sauerbrey has released a 30-second television spot that takes Gov. Parris N. Glendening to task for running negative ads.What the ads say: The commercial begins with a quote from a Sept. 30 editorial in The Sun: "Sauerbrey has a clear, crisp vision we haven't seen that from Parris Glendening."It goes on to say that the governor is running a "campaign of fear," and Sauerbrey says that she has sponsored "tough mandatory sentences for crimes with guns" and has "a strong environmental plan to protect the Chesapeake Bay."

THE RESULTS are in -- and it's not encouraging for the presidential election this fall. Negative campaign tactics have been declared the winner, by a wide margin. Instead of a debate on issues voters care about, the campaign apparatus of Texas Gov. George W. Bush has been sullying the conservative credentials of upstart Sen. John McCain of Arizona. Not surprisingly, those tactics worked in Saturday's Republican primary in South Carolina. It also, not surprisingly, provoked Mr. McCain to strike back while touring Michigan, accusing his opponent of twisting the truth "like President Clinton" and going negative through surrogates.

It was a beautiful day in the city of Baltimore, and the Ravens weren't on TV, so we can't blame weather or football. But there are a bunch of other explanations for the low-and-slow voter turnout in the 2011 city primary, and here are 12 of them: 1.This was the most overrated mayoral race in memory. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake had some attractive opponents, and one of them had Bill Cosby on his side. Plus, they all talked about something that should have excited voters - cutting property taxes.

Republican attorney Dirk Haire is dropping out of the 2006 race for Anne Arundel county executive and endorsing Del. John R. Leopold for the job. Haire - who garnered early attention with a blistering fund-raising pace - said a February poll showed that even if he ran an expensive and negative primary campaign, he would be neck and neck with Leopold. He said Leopold started with an enormous advantage in name recognition that would be hard to overcome. Haire, 37, an Annapolis resident who is legal counsel for the state Republican Party, said a brutal primary fight would take away from GOP efforts to recapture the county executive seat and win re-election for Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. "It was clear I was going to have to run a very hard-charging and negative campaign, and that wasn't something I was willing to do," he said yesterday.

WASHINGTON -- In November, a representative of Steve Forbes' political advertising agency made a fateful phone call to Julie Campasano, who books political ads at WMUR-TV in Manchester, N.H."They wanted to do a 'megabulk buy' -- that's what they called it," Ms. Campasano recalled. "They wanted tonnage, they wanted frequency, they wanted to be wherever they could be. They wanted to buy every stitch of advertising they could get -- and they darn near did. They had a walloping schedule."Financing his own upstart campaign, Mr. Forbes, heir to the Forbes publishing fortune, has turned the Republican presidential primary season upside down, riding his estimated $25 million media blitz to near the top of the polls in New Hampshire.