WHEN BEN NIGHTHORSE CAMPBELL of Colorado was elected to the Senate in 1992, he quickly became a darling of the national Democratic party. As the first person of Native American descent to serve as a senator, and someone who had spent part of his youth in an orphanage, he seemed to embody the American Dream. The media lapped it up: People magazine ran a fawning profile, describing Campbell as “a strong mix of style, substance and complexity,” while the Washington Post anointed him a “national representative for American Indians everywhere.” The Boston Globe magazine touted his ” bootstrap tale,” saying Campbell “approximates the Jeffersonian vision of the American legislator,” dividing his time between his farm and the capital. A piece by Campbell himself, about gambling on Indian reservations, ran on the opinion page of the New York Times.
But beginning last March, press coverage of Campbell became decidedly more critical. Frustrated with the Democratic party’s opposition to the balanced budget amendment and support for increased ranching and mining fees on public lands, Campbell switched to the Republican party. “I have not been able to live up to the expectations of the Democratic party, so it is best to go our separate ways,” he said at a March 3 press conference, where he was flanked by Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and 20 other GOP senators (some wearing bolo ties in Campbell’s honor).
The reporting of Campbell’s announcement was a sign of things to come. In its first six paragraphs, the New York Times’s 24-paragraph story called Campbell’s statement “typically ambiguous,” characterized him as a “sartorial maverick,” incorrectly cited a dispute Campbell had with his former chief of staff as a reason for his switch, and quoted a University of Colorado political analyst as saying Campbell “has a very, very sharp temper and has a hard time controlling it.” Closer to home, the Denver Post thundered that “conservationists shouldn’t be upset” by the senator’s jump to the GOP, because “on environmental issues, Campbell votes like a lousy Democrat — but a great Republican.”
Comments like these became the rule in coverage of Campbell’s desertion of the Democrats. When the Washington-based Center for Media and Public Affairs analyzed newspaper and television coverage of House and Senate Republicans during the first 100 days of the new Congress, it scored 81 percent of the stories about Campbell “negative.” The only person with a higher negative rating (85 percent) was Alfonse D’Amato of New York. Even the Denver Post conceded in a highly critical news story in October that, while the senator ” always took some knocks,” criticism had “sharpened since Campbell’s switch from Democrat to Republican.” The Post story went on to characterize Campbell’s Senate performance as “lackluster” and called him an “uninspired follower, not a leader.” It backed up this claim by quoting former Colorado senator Gary Hart, hardly an impartial observer of Republicans.
While Campbell has faded from the national spotlight since switching parties, what national press coverage he’s received has focused on his opposition to GOP plans for reforming Medicaid and welfare and has ignored his membership in the Northern Cheyenne tribe. “When I was a Democrat,” says Campbell, “there always seemed to be something in there about my ethnic background.” Now, stories stress personal idiosyncrasies (his taste for motorcycles, his appearing in a Banana Republic ad), his non-conformist positions on social issues, and the fact that he switched parties. In other words, ethnic diversity among Republicans isn’t newsworthy, but ideological diversity is.
Campbell claims the most convincing evidence of the shift in press coverage comes from Colorado newspapers. His offce had maintained what it calls “a professional relationship” with the two Denver dailies, the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post, prior to his party switch. But Campbell saw a “marked change” once he became a Republican. At one point, a reporter from one of these papers screamed at his state press secretary, James Doyle, and his Washington chief of staff, Ginnie Kontnik, demanding to speak to the senator. Both papers wrote a number of stories about staff turnover related to the party switch. One melodramatic article in the Denver Post said “old friendships and loyalties have been ripped apart” and quoted a former scheduler for Campbell as saying, “The hardest part for me has been missing the people who I worked with. We had an extremely close office. We really were each other’s family.” The story pointed out the staff were so close they “used to rent a beach house together.”
John Brinkley, a Washington-based reporter for the Rocky Mountain News, has been a source of particular ire for Campbell. Brinkley has covered Campbell for six years, and his coverage was without incident until about six months ago. Then Brinkley wrote a series of stories focusing on turmoil among former staffers, as well as plans for Campbell’s Washington office to go on a taxpayer-funded retreat. In August, Brinkley wrote a critical article describing Campbell as “withdrawn and reluctant to meet with constituents,” adding, “Campbell’s actions are leading some to wonder whether he has lost interest in being a senator.” The criticism included references to Campbell’s reading during the congressional recess (“the 1995 Custom Chrome Guide and the 1995 Harley-Davidson Catalogue”) and his refusal to fight for $ 15 million in federal spending on a Denver-area transportation project. Campbell’s response to this story was to refuse to answer Brinkley’s questions unless they were submitted in writing (unacceptable to Brinkley) and to charge that the reporter has “drinking buddies” among former Campbell staffers. Brinkley says that he has no personal relationship with any of Campbell’s past or present staffers and that his coverage has not been affected by the senator’s jump to the GOP.
But the tensions didn’t end there. In October, one of Brinkley’s Denver- based colleagues, Peter Blake, slammed Campbell for his “adolescent response” to the August piece on Campbell’s performance as a senator: “[If] the story motivated [Campbell] to change his ways, and he can manage to stay enthusiastic throughout the next three years, and no skeletons emerge from his closet, and he doesn’t suddenly decide to ride off to South Dakota forever on his Harley-Davidson, and he gets elected governor (or re-elected senator), then he owes Brinkley a debt of gratitude, an apology and maybe even a turquoise and silver belt buckle he fashioned himself.” Most senators would not dignify such insolence with a comment. But the salty Campbell says of Blake, “I avoid him like the plague.” Campbell’s new distance from reporters may be one reason criticism of him has leveled off. And with a presidential election looming, as well as a contest to fill the seat of Colorado’s retiring GOP senator Hank Brown, Campbell should be out of the limelight for a while.
Nonetheless, having been a member of both parties, Campbell is convinced ” Republicans tend to get worse press across the board” than Democrats. He says he won’t be surprised if the same media that, in the words of House Speaker Newt Gingrich, once portrayed him as a “Native American silversmith who is really interesting and artistic and creative,” write about him with a little less sympathy once he comes up for reelection.
by Matthew Rees
