Georgia Republican U.S. Senate candidate David Perdue provoked a backlash last week when a video surfaced in which he said a candidate who is only a "high school graduate" would not be able to grapple with the "complex" issues of the Senate.
That added his name to the growing list of political candidates tripped up by camera-wielding political operatives known as "trackers ."
As candidates for governor, U.S. Senate and U.S. House traverse Georgia in this blockbuster election year, their every utterance is being recorded and filed away in the hope of finding embarrassment, extremism or flip-floppery.
Multiple Georgia U.S. Senate candidates have had controversial comments publicized by trackers, via the news media. U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston faced scrutiny in December after a tracker caught him saying children could pay a small fee or "sweep the floor in the cafeteria" in exchange for free school lunches.
In 2012 U.S. Rep. Paul Broun told a crowd at a church in Hartwell that evolution, embryology and the Big Bang Theory are "lies from the pit of hell," in video posted on the church website and distributed widely by a Democrat-allied super PAC.
Trackers hired to follow foes are as much a staple of the modern political campaign in statewide and national races as a Facebook page. In addition, anyone with a smartphone and a YouTube account can publish an off-message moment. It has made political research more dynamic and made candidates that much more cautious about everything they say.
Kingston recalled a tracker at one event closely recording a conversation he had with his mother.
“What suffers is public discourse,” Kingston said. “You have to think about what you say being taken out of context. … Not only are your speeches recorded, but private conversations are as well.”
The Perdue video, provided to the AJC by a tipster, has drawn a lot of heat and become a rallying cry for Perdue’s target, Handel, who did not finish college.
But Perdue has not changed his approach.
“Anyone with an iPhone can record the candidate, which means every time David speaks in public we have to assume it is subject to broader scrutiny,” spokesman Derrick Dickey said.
“David is a first-time candidate and will have some hiccups along the way, but as long as he focuses on the issues Georgians care about like the massive federal debt and stagnant economy, he will continue to gain momentum.”
Bobby Kahn, a Democratic political consultant and former state party chairman, said tracking cameras first started popping up in Georgia in 1990 – but then you had to hire an entire crew.
By 1998, they were becoming more common but still not quite accepted.
“We brought a tracker to a debate being sponsored by the First Amendment Foundation and they weren’t going to let us film it,” Kahn said of a governor’s race Democratic primary event when he was working for Roy Barnes. “And we raised hell and they let us film it. And we ended up using the material from that debate in an ad.”
Long considered a dark art, tracking now has gone mainstream.
Campaigns are resigned to trackers’ presence most of the time — in part because they employ trackers, too. If an event is in a private business, a campaign will sometimes ask the owner to boot a tracker. More often, trackers are just part of the scenery.
Former Secretary of State and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Karen Handel was the guest of honor at a recent GOP breakfast in a downtown Carrollton restaurant. As soon as she began speaking, a young man standing in the back wearing a Kingston sticker whipped out a handheld video camera to film her remarks. No one paid him any mind.
When Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Michelle Nunn showed up in Washington on Thursday, apparently for a fundraiser, she was greeted by two trackers as she exited her car. One asked "Why are you in Washington, D.C., raising money from lobbyists this morning?" Nunn did not respond, carrying on a conversation with a companion instead.
In Georgia, individual campaigns are doing some tracking, but state Democratic and Republican parties, and Washington-based outside groups have broader footprints.
On the left is American Bridge 21st Century, a super PAC and affiliated nonprofit founded in 2010 that between them have about 80 staffers, 40 of whom are deployed as trackers around the country. American Bridge is following all five top-tier Republican candidates for U.S. Senate.
After filming an event, trackers immediately report anything eye-popping, but all of the candidate’s comments are transcribed and archived for future use.
“It’s nice to have the gotcha moment,” said spokeswoman Gwen Rocco, but the group is more concerned with cataloging statements to see if candidates are changing positions on issues or presenting different faces to different constituencies.
In addition to trackers on the road, American Bridge’s research staff closely monitors all communications by politicians it targets, ranging from high-profile Congressional candidates to possible future Republican presidential hopefuls.
The infamous remarks by then-Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., about "legitimate rape" – which killed his chances at a U.S. Senate seat – came in a local TV interview that might have been overlooked if American Bridge had not fed it to the national media. American Bridge did the same with Broun's "lies from the pit of hell" video.
To catch the public’s eye, campaigns and tracking groups use a variety of methods. They can slip damaging video to the media, post it to YouTube for all to see, deploy it in an advertisement — or all three.
Tim Miller saw what American Bridge did and was moved to mimic it. A former Republican National Committee official, Miller helped start the America Rising super PAC after determining that research was one of the GOP’s shortcomings in 2012.
America Rising recently shook up the Iowa U.S. Senate race by distributing video of Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley talking dismissively about farmers – no small constituency in Iowa — at a fundraiser with fellow trial lawyers.
But Miller said the bulk of America Rising’s work involves documenting whether candidates are being consistent.
“That is just as important, if not more important to our mission than catching somebody making a gaffe, which I think is kind of a mistaken view of what a tracker’s job is,” he said.
America Rising has 20 trackers throughout the country and in Georgia is following Nunn and U.S. Rep. John Barrow, D-Augusta, who faces a tough re-election. The Georgia GOP is following Nunn and Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Jason Carter.
Trackers can sometimes be amateurs, like the maker of the hidden video that altered the course of the 2012 presidential election. A bartender at a Mitt Romney fundraiser surreptitiously filmed the GOP presidential hopeful saying 47 percent of Americans would not vote Republican because they are too reliant on government programs.
The bartender, Scott Prouty, posted a short clip from the closed-door event on YouTube, and he was tracked down by researcher James Carter IV, of Dunwoody, grandson of former president Jimmy Carter and cousin of Jason Carter. Liberal magazine Mother Jones published the video on its website.
For many, a tracking gig on a campaign is a way to break into the political world. Jeremy Buckmaster, a Democratic media specialist, followed Gov. Sonny Perdue around the state in 2006 for the Georgia Democratic Party under Kahn and called it a “crash course” in politics.
While there was some gentle razzing from Perdue — who would introduce Buckmaster in his speeches — and occasionally a staffer would block his camera’s view, Buckmaster said he was treated well on the trail. He said trackers must be careful not to enjoy their assignment too much.
“You’re sort of in the enemy camp a lot more than you’re in your own camp,” he said. “So the first order of business is not to let Stockholm Syndrome set in. As much as you’re on opposing sides, you sort of come to know the other campaign better than you know your own.”
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