Notes of an opposition researcher.

• Author: Everline, Theresa
• Position: Political consultant employee

It's July 1994 and Midwest hot. I get off a plane, pick up a rental car, and drive straight to the state capital library, where I race through the state legislature votes recorded in some state house journals. Newspaper microfilm still must be scoured; document requests are yet to be filled out. Next to me, I keep a list of names of local politicians. After all, before beginning work as an opposition researcher with a D.C.-based political consultant, I'd never even been to this state. The list of names includes the Republican candidate who is the object of my research, current important political officeholdes, and the Democrat whom I'm trying to get elected and whom I've never met. This last name is always the hardest to remember. While the Republican grows into a recognizable, if simplified, figure, my Democrat remains shadowy and distant. I wonder if he's a good person.

Before being hired as an opposition researcher, I had been dragging my feet toward a Ph.D. in English literature, and trying to find a real-world component to the books I read and taught. Political theory, feminism, cultural criticism--these made me feel engaged in an abstract, intellectualized way, which was admittedly the only way I knew to be engaged. I voted and had attended a few talks and rallies, but I had no real political experience. For an opposition researcher, though, as I learned over the course of my tenure, knowledge and experience are not really necessary.

In his 1988 book Candidates, Consultants, and Campaigns, Frank Luntz attributes the rise of political consultants to two main developments: the increase in the number of election laws, so that candidates need someone to tell them what's illegal; and the importance of new technology, which requires hiring people who can do things like edit commercials. But consultants have ascended from the merely useful. Luntz notes, "Dependent on political consultants, candidates have become less involved in decision making in their own campaigns, sometimes appearing more like spectators than participants in the electoral process." The candidates listen mutely to their poll-watching, personality -remaking consultants--who often know Washington better than the neophyte, "outsider" candidates--with the result that there's a flatness to everyone. A successful candidate fades into the background, though at the same time he's yelling that the other guy's just absolutely wacky. He proves it by swinging around some obscure, probably distorted tidbit.

It was my job to get that tidbit. This was the political" research: hour after lonely hour sitting in state capital libraries (I got to know several between Illinois and Wyoming), paging through those journals to find votes that could be used against state representative X. Several thousand roll call votes would pass under my glance. The results of my toil gave off the whiff of thorough research, but in reality it was just residue scraped from the surface of the facts. In a matter of seconds, I'd evaluate House Bill 100, which exempts two rural counties from emissions testing. Rep. X voted for it. How many counties were exempt before the bill? Five? None? No way to tell. Was it good for the farmers or bad for the environment? "Bad environmental record," I'd write. Who was I kidding? No one else would be digging any deeper. A "no" vote for a bill encouraging joint placement of siblings in foster care brought out the words "doesn't support keeping families together." Odd little bills that found their way into state legislatures were gold mines. One Republican opposed an amendment requiring employers to give mandatory 10-minute breaks every four hours. An image of Victorian sweatshops was summoned. Nowhere would it be noted that the amendment didn't pass anyway, and that 77 other legislators voted against it as well.

The "personal and professional" research could feel a little, well, unbecoming, even though everything was public record. Statements of economic interest might reveal business ownerships, mortgages, stocks, sources of income, and other sundry items you don't want...