"When you've got nothing going for yourself, you bang the other guy with a hammer. You make sure the voters have a big old headache and are so busy gawking at that other guy, they don't notice you."
New Hampshire Gov. Meldrim Thompson, 1976, identifying his favorite campaign strategy
Meldrim Thompson would have loved this Florida governor's race. He thrived on ruthless politics. I'm convinced that through all three of his two-year terms, that's what got him out of bed in the morning.
During an interview for a magazine piece in 1975, the conservative, confrontational Granite State governor told me about a bizarre wager in 1972 between himself and his great friend, William Loeb, editor and publisher of the Manchester Union-Leader. "It was more like a pool," Thompson told me gleefully. "We were betting how soon Loeb would make Edmund Muskie cry like a baby."
Loeb won. He had February 1972.
So angered by the relentless editorial attacks on his family, the senator from Maine and early favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination -- "Moscow Muskie" as Loeb called him -- showed up in front of the newspaper in the middle of a February snowstorm, raging against Loeb and, when it was over, there was Muskie standing on the street, flash bulbs popping -- tears rolling down his face.
It was the end for Muskie. A kind of shot heard 'round the world. His political career never recovered. William Loeb, goaded by Meldrim Thompson, did all that -- with his power and with his pen.
Over the years, when I've thought about Thompson's bizarre comments during that face-to-face -- boldly stated, incidentally, while he still occupied the governor's office -- it always felt like something that wasn't quite real, like a scene out of Batman, with Thompson as the Riddler and Loeb as the Joker, both joyfully dismantling Gotham City.
But that's changed now.
This is the first year Thompson and Loeb feel real. This election year. In fact, the last seven days above all. I think we're seeingthe kind of dirty-tricks politics in Florda in 2014 that Thompson and Loeb immortalized in 1972. Now their exploits feel real to me.
And think about how much easier it is today to rake serious mud when you've got a combined $150 million to spend on slick TV ads, as Charlie Crist and Rick Scott have.
I'm convinced that every regurgitated exaggeration and every intentional politi-fracture in the arsenal of both camps grows more repulsive to voters the closer we get to November.
The latest and most egregious in my opinion is the Democrats' introduction in the last few days of a "whistle-blower" -- John Schilling, appearing at a Crist-staged press conference attended, of course, by an eager press corps.Schilling isa former Hospital Corporation of America accountant who worked with the FBI in 1996 through 2003 and claims Rick Scott, his former boss at HCA, "was the leader of a criminal enterprise."
The press conference was some production. I'm not sure myself what cost more, staging the event or buying Schilling's services.
In case you didn't notice,The Miami Herald updated its original Schilling story Tuesday, pointing this out in the last paragraph: "Aday after ... this press conference, Schilling's name was attached to a fundraising letter -- 'As someone who's seen what Rick Scott is capable of -- I'm asking you: Chip in $1 or more to support Charlie Crist,' it reads."
Then Kurt Eichenwald, a journalist who worked on the HCA stories in the 1990s along with three other writers, also turned up, fluttering across Twitter, jumping on the whistle-blower bandwagon, seizing the opportunity to thump his chest.
What's so dirty about all this is, it's a poorly disguised Charlie Crist campaign ploy to neutralize the damage of Charlie's own questionable past.
Even the Herald reports in its story, none of the charges Schilling levels against Scott are new, that "Scott was never charged with a crime or fined, and voters were barraged with reports of the charges in 2010 when he narrowly defeated Democrat Alex Sink."
Rick Scott's story at HCA now is 20 years old, a part of his life as a hospital administrator, not as a governor, full of innuendo, full of sound and fury. But it really does signify nothing.
Charlie Crist's story, on the other hand, is less than five years old and the charges of fraud leveled against him happened while he was serving either as attorney general or governor of the state of Florida. Hehas no fewer than six former donors to his campaigns -- some of them close friends -- serving time in federal prison for crimes directly linked to that campaign money.
And Scott does have positive ads in the portfolio -- ads that tout his success in bringing jobs to Florida, in helping to turn the state economy around, in lowering Florida's previously crushing debt, and after his first crisis year in office, funding education including teacher raises.
Crist, who spent more than half his term as governor looking covetously at Washington, D.C., has no such good news to tell in an ad.
Greg Blair, spokesman for the Rick Scott campaign, issued a statement Tuesday protesting the Crist campaign's distraction strategy. "All Charlie has is 20-year-old mudslinging because he is desperate to distract from losing 832,000 jobs and his knowledge of the crimes of Jim Greer and Scott Rothstein Charlie's top campaign fundraisers who were both jailed for fraud and corruption," said Blair. "He also won't answer questions about why he circumvented existing safeguards to steer $80 million in taxpayer funding directly to Digital Domain a 'quasi Ponzi scheme.' His desperate distractions about the past can't hide this ongoing trail of corruption.
Somebody in Charlie Crist's campaign must have gotten wind of Meldrim Thompson's favorite campaign strategy -- "When you've got nothing going for yourself, you bang the other guy with a hammer. You make sure the voters have a big old headache and are so busy gawking at that other guy, they don't notice you." It certainly worked against Democrat Harry Spanos in 1976.
Incumbent Thompson, a governor who wanted nukes for his National Guard, didn't have a sterling record going into recessionary 1976. But he knew how to use a hammer and he had his friends in the most powerful newspaper in the state behind him. Spanos never knew what hit him.
Nothing going for him, a friendly press, a hammer for distraction. Charlie Crist and Meldrim Thompson could be soul mates.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
