The Art of the Tabloid Campaign

By ERIC POOLEY

In the cartoonish world of New York politics, elections are seldom fair or square. They're frequently decided by explosive, ridiculous tabloid moments--sometimes by a single word uttered by one candidate and exploited by the other. In 1992 Senator Al D'Amato goaded his rival until he called D'Amato a "fascist." In 1998 it was D'Amato's turn to crack. He called his challenger, Representative Chuck Schumer, a "putzhead." Schumer is now the Senator. But in this year's New York G.O.P. presidential primary, John McCain hopes to win because of something George W. Bush didn't say.

That something, of course, is Bush's failure to speak out against racial and anti-Catholic bigotry when he kicked off his South Carolina campaign at Bob Jones University, where interracial dating is prohibited and the school president believes Catholicism is a cult. The anti-Catholic issue is what New Yorkers will be hearing about this week because there aren't many black Republicans in the state, while Catholics make up half of the G.O.P. primary electorate.

No one in the McCain camp claims the Texas Governor is a bigot. But in New York, what counts is taking an issue and ramming it down the other guy's throat. "You reap what you sow," McCain's political director, John Weaver, told TIME. "We're going to communicate through the mail and over the phone regarding Governor Bush's behavior in South Carolina." And Representative Peter King, a Long Island Republican (and Catholic) who dumped Bush for McCain last week, told TIME, "Bob Jones could be as big as 'fascist' and 'putzhead.'" McCain's New Yorkers know how to inflame. His state chairman, Staten Island borough president Guy Molinari, helped an ally win in 1994 by calling the opponent "an admitted lesbian."

George Pataki is trying to avoid becoming the next G.O.P. Governor whose fire wall goes up in flames. For months his strategy consisted of keeping McCain off the ballot. But after McCain won New Hampshire and challenged the ballot blockade in the courts, opinion welled up against Pataki, and he relented. The ballot remains a Bush advantage, because New Yorkers will cast their votes not for the candidates but for delegates pledged to them. (Each candidate's name appears in small type beneath the names of his delegates.) Bush's delegates are elected officials who will be campaigning hard in their districts. McCain's are unknowns. But McCain's advisers say their voters are smart enough to pull the correct levers. And they point out that the most right-leaning New Yorkers--members of the Conservative and Right to Life parties--can't vote in the G.O.P. primary. Neither can Democrats or independents. To win, McCain must finally draw a majority of his own party. To block him, Pataki last week called an emergency meeting of 100 key strategists and officials, and the group hashed out tactics for the coming week, when Bush will visit the state: events designed to portray him as a paragon of moderation; a $500,000 goal for new fund raising; phone banks and direct mail--"but positive-image stuff, not the crap you saw in South Carolina," says a strategist who was there. "We have damage to undo. The university thing turned into something no one thought it would. It's a runaway train."

The Bush team is praying that McCain's direct mail to Catholics backfires. "People resent being manipulated based on who they are," says a Pataki adviser. "But if no backlash kicks in, we'll have to do something." Pataki wants Bush to go before a Fundamentalist group and speak out against bigotry. McCain's allies have their own dreams. "We'd like to see Bush touring Catholic neighborhoods, telling everyone he's not a bigot," says one.

Connoisseurs of New York politics love this stuff. "McCain's trying to make Bob Jones a symbol of Bush the way Louis Farrakhan was a symbol of Jesse Jackson," says Professor Mitchell Moss, director of the Taub Urban Research Center at New York University. Actually, McCain wants to make Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam hothead, a symbol of Bush as well. In a Fox News interview, Bush was asked if he regarded the Nation of Islam as a "faith-based institution." "I think it is," he replied. "I think it's based upon some universal principles." Since Farrakhan has called Judaism "a gutter religion," the Bush campaign backed away from that last week, saying Bush thought the question referred to the Muslim religion.

For those in the McCain camp, that's another opening, even if they don't always admit it. "I don't see any need for us to be raising these issues," said King last Thursday, during a phone interview with TIME. "It's already out there." He paused. "Can you hang on?" The NBC affiliate in New York was running a report about Bush and Farrakhan, and King wanted to watch. The report cut from Bush to Farrakhan--and then to King. "If [Bush] doesn't know who they are, that to me disqualifies him," King told the camera. "And if he did know who they are and he still comes up in favor of them, that also disqualifies him." King came back on the phone. "See? I'm not doing any of this." He laughed. "Unless a reporter asks me." Welcome to New York, Dubya.