Internal emails from a San Diego Republican’s congressional campaign show the kind of high-stakes tension normally associated with a major statewide race.
Because of key national supporters such as Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, Carl DeMaio’s campaign for a Southern California House seat held by Democratic Rep. Scott Peters was already high-profile even before allegations of plagiarism and sexual harassment became national news.
But emails from the former San Diego city councilman to staffers show a campaign obsessed with political trackers, fearful of spies and nervous about possible scandals.
In a set of emails on April 19, the staff debates the best ways to stop trackers — opposition staffers who show up at events hoping to record the candidate saying something controversial.
The campaign manager even suggested “red flagging” any African Americans at events, though DeMaio personally shot the idea down.
The exchange began when DeMaio noted that he saw two new trackers at an event that day, adding “LOL,” Internet shorthand for “laughing out loud.”
“I hope who ever was staffing the event did not let them in,” responded Todd Bosnich, the staffer who later was fired and has leveled sexual harassment allegations at DeMaio. “Me and Stevie weren’t even allowed to enter Peters event today so we shouldn’t be giving the democrats free reign. If its [sic] on private property tell them to leave. The other side certainly doesn’t let me tape there events if they can stop it”.
“I’ve gone over how to ask a tracker to leave with all of you,” campaign manager Tommy Knepper replied. “Let’s make sure we implement it at every private event we have.”
A few emails later, Knepper gave staff this advice on identifying trackers:
“1. Young-red flag
2. black-red flag
3. young at a saturday morning event-HUGE red flag
4. Very curious and want to talk to staff a a lot-red flag”
DeMaio responded, “Drop black from the criteria. Other 3 ok.”
Another set of emails — unfortunate in retrospect — showed staffers laughing about a BuzzFeed story about Republican candidates plagiarizing Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky. DeMaio himself wasn’t included on that exchange.
“So embarrassing,” wrote campaign spokesman Dave McCulloch.
“Yep….. It’s pretty bad when people are starting to plagiarize the plagiarizer,” wrote Bosnich.
Less than a month after that email exchange, the campaign faced its own plagiarism scandal when National Journal found that a campaign report on pensions contained material from its own database on the subject.
Another email DeMaio sent to top staff on April 7 indicates concern about interlopers invading the campaign office.
“So today we had another attempt to send a SPY into our office,” DeMaio wrote. “Tommy and Chase handled it. Each dept [sic] staff head needs to be on the lookout for spies. Keep our office conversations to ‘printable’ content – and keep strategy discussions private.”
Other emails circulated photos of suspected trackers.
Though aggressive tracking operations have grown common on Senate and gubernatorial races, it’s still unusual to see them on the campaign trail for House seats. Hiring trackers is expensive, and it can be challenging work with long hours for any volunteers.
But DeMaio’s race has high stakes. If he wins, he could be the first openly gay Republican elected to Congress. That would be a huge boon to national Republicans looking to court LGBT voters. And the race is one of the most competitive House campaigns this year, so trackers might be more useful than in many other congressional races.
