Election Dirty Tricks 2000

"I've never seen anything like it," says Michael Graham, who describes himself as a screeching, wild-eyed conservative" radio talk-show host on WSC in Charleston. "It was 100% negative from the start. Every last Bush ad was negative. There was organized phone-calling to my show: McCain had collaborated with the North Vietnamese, fathered illegitimate children, his wife was a drug addict. I had admired Bush's compassionate conservative message, but I wound up voting for McCain, just to keep it close -- I didn't want the people of South Carolina, who shouldn't be allowed near a ballot box without adult supervision, to decide for the rest of the country." Quoted by J. Klein, New Yorker, 3/6/00
The National Right to Life Committee sent a mass mailing to South Carolina voters saying that Senator McCain had "voted to use tax dollars for experiments that use body parts from aborted babies." Like most senators, he voted for fetal cell research crucial to potential cures for Parkinson's disease. NYT 2/26/00
"Like Victorians in a brothel, both candidates separate what they do in campaigns from their sense of their own integrity. This lets them rationalize the seamy side of politics. Gore's always been a street fighter, but Bush is proving he can slum too, and still show up at the garden party the next day. After sliming McCain, Bush was delighted to find that exit polls showed voters thought McCain (who wasn't even running any negative TV ads) was the more negative candidate. Bush played the victim skillfully, suggesting that McCain had called him an 'anti-Catholic bigot' when McCain had merely pointed out that he appeared at anti-Catholic Bob Jones University. This aggressive aggrieving will come in handy. If Bush can make a war hero look bad, he shouldn't have any trouble casting Al Gore as the heavy." Jonathan Alter, Newsweek 3/20/00
"If the disgraceful whispering campaign against Senator McCain is met with cynical winks and shrugs then we truly have stopped expecting that basic decency be a part of our political discourse. In this turn of events, which would have made Orwell proud, bravery is a sign of weakness, heroism is the sign of a character disorder, and exemplary service is a liability. This is done to punish Mr. McCain for his position on campaign finance reform, and by tarnishing his service record, to make the less than stellar record of other candidates seem acceptable." P. Dan NYT Letters 11/25/99
"I am not surprised by reports that Senator John McCain's political enemies have been spreading rumors that his famous temper is a sign of a broader 'instability' caused by his imprisonment in Vietnam. In fact, a few weeks ago I received a call from an old friend who is also close to the George W. Bush campaign soliciting comments on Mr. McCain's 'weakness.' As I told that caller, I think John McCain is solid as a rock. And I consider it blasphemy to smudge the straight-arrow prisoner of war record of a man near death when he arrived at Hoa Loa prison in 1967...."
Just days before the New York primary a mystery group, Republicans for Clean Air, paid $2.5 million for political commercials that attacked McCain's record on clean air claiming he voted against solar and renewable energy while Bush led one of the first states to clamp down on old coal-burning electric power plants. Facts: The ads were prepared and paid for by Bush friends; the clamp-down was voluntary, few companies signed up, and many of the dirtiest plants were exempted; McCain voted both for and against solar and renewable energy spending bills; the vote mentioned in the ad was one of many he has cast to object to the way they were approved without being considered in committee rather than the content. Bush also spent $1.5 million in New York and $400,000 in Ohio on last minute ads accusing McCain of opposing breast cancer research... Bush later admitted these ads were "probably misleading."
The Michigan Right to Life organization sent mailings endorsing Bush to 400,000 homes followed by pre-recorded phone calls to each of these households. In addition Pat Robertson sent pre-recorded phone calls to conservative Christians in Michigan calling a McCain campaign chair a "vicious bigot" and saying they should vote for Bush to "protect unborn babies and restore religious freedom." Both organizations said their efforts were "independent of" the Bush campaign.
In the 2000 Ohio Primary on Super Tuesday, voting precincts in northeast Ohio where McCain was leading Bush ran out of Republican ballots, and while additional ballots were printed in Dayton and flown up to Cleveland, a "mix-up" resulted in the plane sitting on the runway for several hours... and since the polls were not kept open until the additional ballots arrived, many were not able to vote.