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Back in the good old days, when Dick Nixon ruled the most powerful nation in the world, it was called "ratfucking."
The idea was to undertake lots of little covert actions to knock your opponents off guard, muddy their message or totally discredit them. In polite society, such actions are called dirty tricks. They're actually sabotage.
For Nixon's shock troops in the Watergate era, the favored ploys included bogus campaign literature. Or canceling reservations for meeting halls where Democratic events were to take place. Or faking the famous "Canuck letter" to the editor that attributed a slur against Canadians to Edmund Muskie, ending his presidential hopes in 1972.
Don't think that such dirty tricks ended with myriad Watergate convictions. Witness Karl Rove's style of take-no-prisoners politics. Or the fact that the man who first told then-Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein about the term ratfucking, Donald Segretti, later served as John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign co-chairman in Orange County, Calif.
Today, ratfucking is just as much fun -- and just as desperately unethical -- as ever, if last week's debate about the Florida Hometown Democracy movement is any indication.
The debate was held at the Pepin Hospitality Center in East Tampa, in front of a very pro-business, $39-a-plate 7 a.m. power-breakfast kind of crowd. Among the debaters was the King of All Strip Club Owners Joe Redner, whose ideas on growth are both the most populist and best thought-out that I've heard in local politics in two decades. Outside the center were four "strippers" -- strategically planted so that they'd be seen by audience members and, more importantly, by local press. Outfitted as if fresh from a shift at the Mons Venus, dollars tucked into their garters, they strutted their stuff with misspelled signs supporting their man, Joe.
But they weren't Joe's strippers. When he went out to see them after learning of their little performance, the four were oblivious to the fact that their supposed hero was actually standing right in front of them. As TBO.com reported: "They kept hollering, 'We support Joe. We support Joe.' Finally I said, 'I don't want you here,'" said Redner, who didn't recognize the women -- and said they clearly didn't recognize him.
The quartet was gone before the cops arrived. The next day, the stripper angle dominated coverage in the two daily newspapers and removed any shred of legitimacy Redner's arguments may have had. (The debate-sponsoring Tampa Bay Business Journal's coverage focused on the issues and not the tits and ass. Kudos.)
Nobody knows for sure who sent the stripper brigade to the event, and opponents of Hometown Democracy deny any involvement. But Florida's developers, homebuilders and other pro-growth business interests are already knee-deep in doing anything they can to derail a planned 2008 referendum on the initiative.
A debate over the merits of Hometown Democracy is best left for closer to the election, and I have some serious reservations about how such a direct democracy tactic would improve Florida instead of just freezing it in its current horrible shape. For those not familiar with the idea, however, Hometown Democracy would take most land-use decisions away from elected officials and essentially force developers to take their projects directly to the voters for approval. Proponents see it as a way of stopping runaway development, urban sprawl and the cozy relationship that many in the growth industry have with the vast majority of politicians in Florida.
How do opponents see it?
As the developer- and lawyer-laden Coalition for Property Rights group in Orlando says: "This amendment, if placed on the ballot, represents the single greatest threat to Florida property rights since the adoption of the State Growth Management Act and its comprehensive planning mandate."
Yes, the idea of asking the voters every time you want to pave over more of this state or put up another strip center scares the shit out of those people who have made a lot of money doing just such things.
The Florida Chamber of Commerce is so freaked out that it is pushing a competing constitutional amendment that promises reform but limits development referenda. Its political action committee, Floridians for Smarter Growth PAC, has raised $841,000, more than $500,000 of which came from the National Association of Home Builders. Tampa's Lykes Bros. Inc. gave $40,000.
The chamber's political committee won't be alone in fighting against a justifiably upset citizenry. Last month, Tallahassee lawyer John French formed a PAC called Save Our Constitution. The Orlando Sentinel reported that the committee appears to have hired Florida's king of negative campaigns, Republican consultant Public Concepts of West Palm Beach, and its owner, Randy Nielsen. (French also represents Nielsen in a lawsuit filed by a legislative candidate that Public Concepts helped savage during an election.) Save Our Constitution is also benefiting from the services of former Republican House Speaker John Thrasher, who wrote a letter last week trying to convince people to revoke their signatures on the Hometown Democracy petition. Changing your mind about a petition wasn't legal until earlier this year, when a lawmaker slipped a revocation provision in an election reform bill. Couldn't have been the anti-Hometown forces that did that, could it?
Thrasher's letter, on Save Our Constitution letterhead, didn't mention that, as the St. Petersburg Times reported, he is a lobbyist or that his company represents such developers and pro-growth giants as "St. Joe Company, Associated Industries of Florida, Walt Disney World and the engineering firm Post Buckley Schuh & Jernigan." Or that his firm has been paid $10,000 by the other anti-Hometown PAC, Floridians for Smarter Growth.
Oh, and another thing: Both anti-Hometown PACs share a treasurer, Republican accountant Nancy Watkins of Tampa.
How cozy for all involved.
Lobbyists. Tallahassee lawyers. Developers. A campaign attack-ad specialist. With millions of dollars likely at their disposal. Doesn't sound like much of a fair fight.
These guys have the opportunity to make Segretti and Clawson and Colson and Liddy and Hunt look like amateurs.
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