The consultant credited by many in the industry with pioneering tracking now worries the tactic has been taken too far by third-party groups, but his competitors say he’s just crying foul to protect a client.
As the research director at the DNC and the DSCC, Mike Gehrke helped stick cameras in the faces of countless Republican candidates over the past decade. But Gehrke, now a pollster at Benenson Strategy Group, said he recently saw a line being crossed when a gubernatorial candidate in Indiana was filmed leaving an event with his 84-year-old mother.
The video of the America Rising PAC tracker questioning John Gregg, TMZ style, as he walks his mother through a parking lot in Linton, Ind. was shot by the Democrat’s campaign and generated some local press. But Gehrke said he’s just using it to point out a foul from the other side, not trying to turn campaign tactics into an exploitable issue for his client.
“There are some things that are off limits and we used to recognize that,” Gehrke told C&E. “I think there’s a lot in bounds – you can go pretty far – but you don’t have to go this far. They don’t need footage of John Gregg’s mom in their campaign ads.”
That wasn’t the point, according to Amelia Chasse, a spokeswoman for America Rising.
“One of the hallmarks of tracking is consistency – we don’t see it as looking for the money shot.”
In fact, tracking is now about detecting differences, however slight, in how candidates are addressing different audiences. “The tactics are fairly universal,” said Chasse. “We track public events that are publicized and political in nature.”
Campaigns have long tried to unnerve their rivals by pestering them carnival-barker style in front of reporters and TV cameras. This stunt culture extends back to the chicken-costumed heckler who trailed George H. W. Bush after he refused to debate Bill Clinton to Butt Man, the seven-foot, foam-rubber cigarette costume Democrats donned to shadow “Smokin Bob Dole” to this cycle’s Rubio Robots who, well, made trouble outside of events.
Tracking is akin to these stunts, but has a slightly different origin. For instance, in down-ballot races, as local news coverage of candidate events has waned, campaign trackers emerged to fill the gap. At first they were used to record a candidate taking questions at a town hall-style event. That grew into following the candidate everywhere he or she went. This can result in a worn familiarity, like in the case of George Allen who finally called out his tracker during an event in Virginia in 2006 with famously disastrous consequences.
“Tracking used to be the only way you were going to get footage and the only way to get a question asked,” said Gehrke. “The news wasn’t covering these events so we pretty much got people into the audience [to film]. It wasn’t interacting with the candidate and trying to get a reaction. It wasn’t their job to harass and follow a candidate every moment of the day.”
Gehrke said his trackers were given clear instructions: “Stay out of the process. We don’t want you to be the story.”
Now, tracking isn’t just a news story, it’s a segment of the industry with groups like American Bridge on the left and America Rising on the trail full-time. Moreover, the practice is now to follow the candidate while lobbing questions like a TMZ cameraman. The more aggressive tactic works two-fold.
It generates footage of a candidate refusing to answer a question and looking uncomfortable. And if he or she has the misfortune to try and evade the tracker, the tracker then has footage of the candidate fleeing. The only way to get through this is to grin and bear it.
Gehrke said Cassie Hammond, the America Rising tracker, should be fired for what she did. He also called on the industry to set new ground rules for tracking. “I think it would take people getting together and realizing they need to be civil,” he said.
It sounds like crocodile tears to Chasse, who argued that Gehrke would feel differently about the footage if the roles were reversed and it was Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) on the receiving end.
She also rejects the idea that the state of tracking requires some sort of industry-wide action. It’s unnecessary, she added, because the incident was a one-off.
“This is not a problem that we’ve had. It was at a public event,” she said. “We weren’t filming him at his mother’s birthday party.”