Angelides' Campaign is on Steroids

New West Notes

Bill Bradley

Welcome to the anatomy of a stunt. In which two high-ranking staffers for a politician known as a micromanager surreptitiously access, download, and leak to the Los Angeles Times a computer file of a purportedly explosive private discussion only to find it a minor flap followed by heated debate over the use of a cyber trick which Democratic spinners could not explain themselves for more than a day. That’s the situation with last Friday’s page one Los Angeles Times story over a tape of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger provided to the paper by aides to his trailing Democratic challenger, Treasurer Phil Angelides.

Dan Newman was the treasurer’s communications director during his Democratic primary battle with ex-eBay honcho-turned-state Controller Steve Westly; Sean Sullivan the campaign research director. As such, they are used to working directly with campaign manager Cathy Calfo and the candidate. Calfo says neither she nor Angelides knew what they were doing. Many Democrats privately doubt that. Both aides formerly worked with Democratic opposition research guru Ace Smith. In a campaign that has gone seriously south, they’re very smart, capable guys who wanted to turn things around. In the “oppo” culture they’ve been part of, that is frequently to be accomplished by expose.

This expose, however, while exposing politically incorrect language on Schwarzenegger’s part (surprising no voter who has followed his famously roguish career) — and the fact that his ethnological analysis seems lacking — was much ado about very little. The governor was quickly defended by leading Democrats like legendary former California Assembly Speaker and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, current Speaker Fabian Nunez and the chairs of the Legislature’s Latino and black caucuses, Martha Escutia and Merv Dymally, the state’s former lieutenant governor. Schwarzenegger appeared with his friend, budding Democratic superstar and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Democratic operatives themselves noted that you can hear much more offensive language in many political offices all the time, not to mention at public roasts.

Then came the question of how the feat was accomplished. Sophisticated political figures spinning on behalf of the Democratic campaign struggled with varying explanations. The file happened to show up on a public section of the governor’s web site. But it was never visible to anyone prerusing the public directory of the site, so a more sophisticated explanation was required. Trouble was, the spinners clearly did not know how the Angelides aides did it. The recording of the private discussion was somehow grafted onto a speech recording. The audio file in question was weblinked to a public file. The old computer network of the Governor’s Office had a backdoor directory which was accessible if you knew it was there. And so forth. Confusingly. Contradictorily.

Calfo herself, confirming on the record to the Sacramento Bee what others had said earlier in the day about her campaign’s role, said vaguely “that an Aug. 29 news release included a link to an audio file featuring Schwarzenegger speaking about Hurricane Katrina. That link, she said, led to other audio files from the Governor’s Office.”

Yet another high-ranking Democrat with knowledge of the governor’s old computer system, insisted that the feat was accomplished by clicking on an audio file and erasing it, leading to the discovery of a hidden directory of the system.

All this halting attempt at explanation makes it clear that the file was not actually accessible to the average computer literate person.

At an emergency press conference yesterday to deal with the flap, campaign manager Calfo, California’s former deputy state treasurer, took another stab at explaining how it was done. She said her senior staffers had “backed up” on a web link to get to the private audio file of Schwarzenegger. Well, no.

Others, who have actually done this sort of thing, say that you don’t back up on anything, you “chop off” the ends of web addresses in effort to find a higher-level computer directory otherwise invisible to the public.

A friend of the two staffers talked with me last night about it and said that it was what they did. Which may be so. But when we went to a few sites and I performed the trick, the sites didn’t necessarily respond the way he suggested they would.

A few things are clear about this flap. Schwarzenegger’s offense, which the LA Times deemed important enough to play on page one, wasn’t so offensive. (Some Democrats are saying there are far worse things on unreleased tape uncovered by the clever opposition researchers. But given their judgment about the import of this tape, that is questionable at best.)

The file in question was invisible to the average Internet user. It may have been gained access to by performing the “chopping” trick, or it may not. But some of the smartest people in politics made it painfully clear they had no idea how to do it.

Schwarzenegger campaign manager Steve Schmidt asks a very logical question. If it’s right there on the public server, why did it have to be leaked? Why didn’t any reporter notice it? Why didn’t the Times, with its large staff, get its own access to it, instead of relying on the Angelides campaign? And not mentioning that it was Schwarzenegger’s opponents who provided the information.

On the other hand, while these guys coming from the opposition research culture are very adept at getting information that most people can’t get, the governor’s security was clearly lacking. His server seems not to have required a sophisticated hacking algorithm in order to compromise it.

And why are private discussions — recorded to help speechwriters understand Schwarzenegger’s style and way of putting things — stored on a networked computer system? All networked systems are vulnerable to surreptitious entry now.

Was this “hacking,” a term of art that is not so specific as some imagine; was it illegal? I don’t know. There is certainly an ethical question about manipulating a computer system to gain access to private files. A clever person could probably manipulate my computer system to gain access to my private files, and I’d be quite unhappy if that were to happen. So there are outstanding questions about this incident.

But there is a larger question as well. And that has to do with the state of the campaign. As Democratic strategist Garry South, architect of the last two Democratic gubernatorial victories in California, has frequently noted, and many other name Democrats privately agree, the Angelides campaign has not done the sort of basic things that a highly viable campaign needs to do to win the California governorship. Angelides is competitive, to the extent that he is, only because he is a Democrat in a mostly Democratic state and he is running against a governor still recovering from an absolutely disastrous year.

Eight weeks before the general election, Angelides still has not introduced himself in any meaningful way to the people of California. Some of his most important policy positions are remarkably vague. There is no clear-cut theme to his candidacy. His TV advertising has been a series of reactive stunts: Terminator on a motorcycle going backwards, “A leader not an actor,” Schwarzenegger elected Bush and we’re still in Iraq. This misfired attempt to strike a big blow against Schwarzenegger by showing that he says mildly outrageous things, something everyone already knows about Schwarzenegger, was doomed to failure. It should have been no surprise that leading Democrats would spring to Schwarzenegger’s defense. They know that such things are said all the time — by Democrats — as Democratic strategist Bill Cavala’s comments below make clear. This is another stunt in a campaign of stunts. It is as though you decided to become a champion bodybuilder. And adopted as your strategy the regular practice of taking steroids. But not of lifting weights.