Just about wherever U.S. Senate hopefuls Michelle Nunn and David Perdue go, they are followed by camera-wielding trackers from rival parties or outside groups who are looking to capture and disseminate a damaging moment. This leads to cat-and-mouse games that we witnessed Monday from both campaigns on the trail.
Television photographers were less than thrilled with Nunn’s campaign, our AJC colleague Aaron Gould Sheinin found, when her team scuttled an outside media availability and forced everyone back into a noisy and cramped corner of the Thumbs Up Café in the Old Fourth Ward.
Cameras were already set up in front of a bench along the iconic diner’s western wall when the assembled media slobs were ordered back inside.
One cameraman complained that the audio inside was horrible. Another said the glass-block window Nunn was standing in front of us was killing his shot. “Can’t we go back outside?” one photographer asked. An unkempt print reporter (that would be Aaron) knocked over a full bottle of syrup trying to wedge into place.
“We’re doing it here,” a Nunn press aide said.
No explanation was given but none was really needed. The likely reason for the switch? A GOP tracker appeared outside.
The Nunn campaign often is cagey about event details until the last minute in an attempt to avoid trackers, who can film in public places but are typically barred from indoor events on private property.
That was the case at the Floyd County GOP headquarters in Rome on Monday. Perdue supporters crammed a hallway to shake hands with the candidate, who got ready to head back outside so everyone could more easily gather.
"You can't speak outside," an aide said.
"Why not?" Perdue replied.
"There's a tracker."
"So what?" the candidate asked.
"We're not going to do that," the aide replied.
So Perdue gave brief remarks in a cramped hallway, so as to offer no new material to curious Democrats.
The campaign's relationship with the tracker from the American Bridge PAC is especially fraught these days. Last week Perdue signed the insulin pump of a 13-year-old girl, upon her request, to raise awareness about juvenile diabetes.
American Bridge sent the footage to Buzzfeed at an angle that appeared Perdue signed the woman's torso. The campaign debunked the story, but not before Democrats circulated the "creepy" moment.
Perdue has now worked the incident into his stump speech, but it's less about the tracker and the brief controversy than about the core of his message: The girl's family was complaining about Obamacare.
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