In 2000, just before stopping her column to run for Congress against Jeff Flake, Susan Bitter Smith wrote the following article calling on candidates running for office to, in her words, “stick to the discussion of issue differences” and, “not to succumb to the temptation of personal vilification of their opponents.” Bitter-Smith continued with a clarion call of sorts to “challenge all of us to show (George Will) that we do have self-restraint.”
Here is Susan Bitter-Smith’s column as it appeared on January 7, 2000 in The Arizona Republic:
Editor’s note: This is Susan Bitter Smith’s final Community column as she runs for Congress in District 1. In fairness to all political candidates, the Community editorial page routinely discontinues columns by politicians in the year they run for office.
“Because negative campaigning provides the biggest bang for the political buck, it has become so incessant that good politicians are coarsened and coarse people are drawn to politics.” - George F. Will
Election season 2000 has begun, with the Presidential Preference Primary and local municipal elections almost upon us. Signs are already going up, and television ads are beginning to hit the airwaves.
Scottsdale will share in this election fervor as it experiences a hot race for mayor and for three City Council seats. We know that we will have a new mayor and at least two new council members, because several incumbents are moving on.
What we don’t know yet is what the tenor of the campaign will be.
Will the election debate focus on issue differences and leadership styles? Or will it degenerate to the negative campaigning that George Will believes has become “incessant” in American politics?
“Incivility is a consequence of what Congress (or the City Council) is and does. Congress (or the City Council), a representative institution, represents the nation’s increasing vulgarity and declining self-restraint.” - Will.
Scottsdale is no different from the rest of the country. We have seen recent elections, both on issues and for elected office, reduced to personal pettiness and inappropriate attack. Is this because election behavior is representative of a general decline in the country, as Will believes, or is it simply that negativity works?
We certainly have had recent examples of last-minute personal attacks on candidates being successful in scuttling attempts to get elected. We fortunately have had other examples of such tactics accomplishing exactly the opposite. Although Will may be accurate in pointing to a less restrained public, we may also have a more educated public, one less inclined to jump to an ill-founded conclusion without adequate justification.
Still, the prospect of attack campaigning remains. A lot is at stake, with the future direction of Scottsdale on the line. There may be some who even believe that because this is such an important election, they must win, regardless of the cost.
Often the media plays right into the hands of such candidates by responding to campaign ploys of shopping stories about the opposition, complete with ready sources for the reporter or by repeating stories shared with them by” concerned citizens” without properly following up to check their veracity.
It is difficult to know when to pursue such sources of information, given the unfortunate nature of today’s politics.
I, for one, don’t happen to believe that the “end justifies the means “when it comes to campaigning. I do continue to believe that the public can differentiate between legitimate messages of issue differences and gratuitous personal attacks.
I challenge the candidates in this election cycle in Scottsdale, and future election cycles, to stick to discussion of the issue differences and their vision for the future and not to succumb to the temptation of personal vilification of their opponents.
I further challenge the media to be selective in their response to “attack” politics. I know it may appear to be more exciting to talk about “blood feuds” between candidates, but help them help themselves by sticking to covering the debate on the issues.
More importantly, I challenge all of us to show George Will that we do have “self-restraint.” Let us not respond to negative campaigning. Let us demand a discussion on the topics of the day and the leadership of our candidates. If we, the voters, set the example, then our candidates will have to follow our lead.
Let us reverse the trend and show our candidates that the qualities we really want in our representative government are sound logic, honest evaluations, an appreciation of our history, and a commitment to remember who the boss is - the electorate!
Of course, as political observers would soon see, Bitter-Smith, according to reports, wasn’t quite willing to follow her own advice. Here is the article that was published on August 31, 2000 in The Arizona Republic:
‘SLEAZEBALL POLITICS’ IN DISTRICT
Congressional candidate Susan Bitter Smith’s campaign assembled personal information on a rival, then delivered it to still another rival.
With that, the focus of Arizona’s hottest congressional race, the Republican contest in District 1, has become dirty tricks and integrity.
Tom Liddy, who received the information and blew the whistle, charged Wednesday that Bitter Smith offered it to him in hopes he would use it to try to disparage the other candidate.
Liddy accused Bitter Smith of breaking the clean-campaign pledge for which she had been the leading proponent.
Bitter Smith countered that the entire episode represented a ploy by Liddy.
She said that although she regrets not throwing out the materials when they came to her, she passed them along to Liddy because “I didn’t care about them one way or another” and Liddy had asked for such material.
Liddy’s retort: “It didn’t happen. Period.”
Although Liddy never revealed who was the subject of the documents, it became clear in the turmoil that it was Jeff Flake.
Asked whether there is anything in his background that could give rivals ammunition of a personal nature, Flake said, “There is nothing.”
He said that he had no idea what was in the documents and that he will continue to focus his campaign on issues of taxation and education.
“This is sleazeball politics at its worst,” Flake said. “It’s everything you’d expect (of Bitter Smith) given Susan’s willingness to say anything to get elected.”
The documents have been destroyed. Liddy and Flake jointly shredded them Wednesday without Flake’s inspecting them.
That leaves Bitter Smith, Liddy and East Valley Tribune reporter Mark Flatten, who had been summoned by Liddy to look through them, with an inkling of what they contained.
In an article Wednesday, Flatten said “the Tribune’s inspection … did not ascertain any financial wrongdoing.”
Bitter Smith said the package amounted to about 45 pages of “public documents” concerning real estate dealings. She said campaign volunteers, whom she declined to identify, brought her the information several weeks ago and she set it aside.
“In retrospect, I should have tossed them out, and I regret not having done so,” she said Wednesday in a statement
Liddy, however, said a 108-page package was waiting at the door when his campaign office opened Saturday morning. He said the “financial and personal background” information was thorough and appeared to have been compiled professionally.
He said he inspected the material only enough to verify that it was documents described to him Friday in a surprise phone call from Bitter Smith.
Liddy said he accepted her offer of documents because he wanted proof her campaign had been trying to gather “dirt” on candidates in the Congressional District 1 race.
Liddy said a private investigator told him about turning down a request months ago to develop background information on Liddy and a fourth candidate in the race, Sal DiCiccio.
The investigator, speaking on condition that he not be identified, confirmed Liddy’s account. He said the person who contacted him was affiliated with the Bitter Smith campaign.
Bitter Smith said that the person identified by the investigator has no connection to her campaign and that she has not sought anyone to conduct personal back grounding.
The race, in which Bitter Smith, Liddy and a fifth candidate, Bert Tollefson, have signed a pledge to keep personal attacks and innuendo out of their campaigns, is for the GOP nomination to succeed U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon. The district covers parts of the East Valley, south Scottsdale, Ahwatukee and central Phoenix.
Bitter Smith said she had not authorized anyone to deliver the material to Liddy, but said it was done by a campaign volunteer directed by her staff. She would not identify any of the individuals.
She said that she had no idea what materials Liddy might have shown to the media or Flake, and suggested that Liddy was “attempting to smear another candidate” by distorting what her campaign provided.
“Tom (Liddy) was intending to try to hit not only Jeff (Flake) but myself by contacting a reporter with what to all accounts people believe to be nonsensical information,” she said.
Bitter Smith said she agreed to turn over the material when she spoke by phone with Liddy about another matter. She said he had been asking for such material for months, an assertion Liddy strongly denied.
Liddy said he was “profoundly offended” by the suggestion that he would resort to a personal attack.
“(She) wanted me to do her dirty work by slinging her mud,” he said.
He insisted that Bitter Smith had made the phone call and unilaterally offered the material.
Keith Woods, a campaign worker in Liddy’s office, said he was a few feet from the candidate during Bitter Smith’s call and could vouch for Liddy’s description of what the conversation entailed.
Special thanks to one of our fan readers down on the corner of Van Buren and 2nd Street.