Tracking the candidates: Fair tactic or dirty pool?

More than 14 months to go before the November 2008 election, and already Republican Sen. Susan Collins and Rep. Tom Allen – the six-term 1st District congressman who presumably will be her Democratic opponent – are at each other’s throats.

The issue du jour concerns the campaign practice called “tracking” by politicians who prefer the euphemism to the less polite “stalking” favored by most anyone who has been doggedly tracked.

Theoretically, tracking involves filming an election opponent at his or her every turn, presumably with the aim of gathering legitimate information for conducting an effective and fair campaign. In the real world of modern politics, however, tracking is more likely to be employed in quest of a “gotcha” moment that can be strategically exploited in a number of ways, including future campaign advertising.

Collins, through her chief of staff, Steve Abbott, claims the Allen campaign is tracking her far too up close and personal for her liking. The senator is mad as hell and not about to take it any more, Abbott told Allen, in effect, in a letter made available to reporters.

Abbott complained that a man working for the Maine Democratic Party shadowed Collins as she marched in a parade last Saturday at Stockton Springs. “He trailed her closely, recording nearly her every move, including the conversations that she had with the people who greeted her at the event and along the parade route,” Abbot wrote. “He even filmed the license plate and vehicle belonging to the staffer who drove Senator Collins after the parade.”

God only knows what the latter tactic was about, unless it has something to do with the high crime of treason for aiding and abetting a Republican in the pending Democratic revolution.

What was particularly offensive, Abbott said, was the manner in which the man – acknowledged by the Maine Democratic Party as having been hired to track Collins – went about the job. Abbott claimed that the tracker’s allegedly intrusive behavior in general was “over the line.”

Oh, come now, countered Carol Andrews, a Democratic Party spokeswoman. “I don’t think he was in anybody’s face,” she told BDN reporter Tom Groening.

Fortunately for Andrews, she hadn’t bet the Allen campaign slush fund on the accuracy of that assertion. For unbeknown to the Democrats and innocent bystanders at the parade, a case of dueling trackers was being played out, and her tracker had unwittingly become the track-ee.

Turns out the Collins camp had also assigned a tracker to record the parade march of the senator, thereby unintentionally capturing a “gotcha” moment of its own in a classic spy-versus-spy episode worthy of an old Mad magazine comic strip segment. You remember the deal: Two spies constantly warring with each other devise increasingly sophisticated ways of doing away with one another. Sometimes, the first spy’s booby trap works. Sometimes the second spy comes up with a brilliant counter-ploy, forcing the first spy to revert to Plan B to counter the other spy’s counter, and so on, until the plot peters out.

In the case at hand, one of the second spy’s photographs of the parade made available by Abbott accompanied the story in Tuesday’s newspaper. It clearly shows the first spy pointing a camera at Collins as he stands next to her, the two seemingly engaged in a semi-sideways Stockton Springs tango maneuver behind a spiffed-up color guard unaware of the melodrama being played out aft. The man may not have been squarely in the lady’s face, but if that’s not as fine an example of violating one’s personal space as you’d care to witness, I’ll eat my hat.

The Allen camp says tracking is a reality of modern political campaigns, and candidates should expect to have their public statements and appearances recorded. Tracking presumably will continue to be a part of the campaign’s repertoire. The Collins camp says the filming of speeches, meetings or events where the candidate offers policy or ideas should be fair game, but there are limits. Abbott said the Collins campaign has not tracked Allen, and doesn’t plan to do so.

Thus, the question remains: Is aggressive tracking a fair campaign tactic, or dirty pool unrepresentative of Maine values? The candidates seem smart enough to resolve the issue soon, rather than let voters answer the question at the ballot box more than a year down the road at the end of a tiresome campaign.

On the other hand, when it comes to spy versus spy, the first spy always seems smart enough not to let the second spy turn the tables on him, too. So there you go.

BDN columnist Kent Ward lives in Limestone. Readers may contact him via e-mail at olddawg@bangordailynews.net.