Trackers as Stalkers

Politico reports that some Democratic trackers are crossing a line.

While most serious campaigns on both sides use campaign trackers — staffers whose job is to record on video every public appearance and statement by an opponent — House Democrats are taking it to another level. They’re now recording video of the homes of GOP congressmen and candidates and posting the raw footage on the Internet for all to see.

That ratcheting up of the video surveillance game is unnerving Republicans who insist that even by political standards, it’s a gross invasion of privacy. Worse, they say, it creates a safety risk for members of Congress and their families at a time when they are already on edge after a deranged gunman shot former Arizona Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords 18 months ago.
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Trackers assigned to California GOP candidate Ricky Gill, a highly touted challenger to Democratic Rep. Jerry McNerney, pushed the edge of the envelope even further.

In May, a clip of Gill’s parents’ Lodi, Calif., mansion appeared online. The one-minute video shows the front of the huge home, a gated fence and vast front yard. The next month brought a three-minute video that begins by slowly passing by Gill’s home, with a cameraman overheard saying, “This is the house that he’s been registered to vote in since 2005.”

About one minute in, the video shifts to the University of California-Berkeley, campus, where the 25-year-old Gill recently finished studying law. The tracker waits in a hallway where Gill soon appears. As the candidate walks outside, the tracker follows in clandestine pursuit.

In 2004, a Senate candidate faced the same treatment.  The Chicago Tribune reported:

A campaign operative for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jack Ryan will keep himself and his video recorder a few more paces away from his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, a Ryan spokesman said Friday.

The spokesman also apologized if the operative invaded Obama's "personal space."

Ryan staffer Justin Warfel had been trailing and filming Obama, a state senator from Hyde Park, since at least May 11. Ryan aides said they dispatched Warfel to monitor Obama in Springfield and in other Downstate locales because they are trying to document if Obama's statements are consistent as he campaigns across Illinois.

But Warfel had been getting a little too close for Obama's comfort, and when Obama complained to reporters and the Ryan campaign on Thursday that Warfel was stalking him, Warfel was told to take a step back.

"If we got a little too close to his personal space, we'll see that that doesn't happen again," said Bill Pascoe, communications director for Ryan. "The campaign manager has asked [Warfel] just make sure you don't get too close. ... I have no reason to doubt Mr. Obama's word, and I offer an apology on behalf of the campaign.
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"Politics in Illinois and here in Chicago is certainly a contact sport," Obama said Friday at an unrelated news conference. "But I think it is indicative of a pattern in politics in the United States these days, especially in Washington, where anything goes. There is sort of a scorched-earth approach to politics so that people in politics think they can do things that none of us would ever think about doing in normal life."

Scenes from the Air War

Ricky Gill is challenging California incumbent Democrat Jerry McNerney:

At The Washington Post, Aaron Blake writes:

The ad war in the Montana governor’s race is officially on, with a group affiliated with the Democratic Governors Association going up with an ad responding to Republican attacks.

A state GOP ad earlier this week, partially funded by the Republican Governors Association, hit state Attorney General and presumptive Democratic nominee Steve Bullock for not joining on to a lawsuit, filed by other state attorneys general, that seeks to overturn President Obama’s health care law.

In response, the Democrats’ ad, from the DGA-affiliated group Montana Jobs, Energy, and Technology (JET) PAC, says Bullock saved the state thousands of dollars by declining to take part in the suit.

California Campaign Finance News

Scott Lay reports at Around the Capitol (CA):

Tonight at midnight is the third quarter filing deadline for congressional candidates. As I wrote in Thursday's Nooner, this is an important period for several candidates. It will give an indication of whether some people who are testing the waters are in it to win it, may signal some retirements, and can shine the light on dark horses. This quarter's reports give us a little of each.

Anyway, not all reports are in, but I'm hopping on a plane back to Sacramento after several days in Dallas. I'll update the online version of this message tonight or tomorrow morning and I'll have more analysis in Monday's Nooner.

My quick take:

• The shocker: Lodi resident and UC Berkeley law student Ricky Gill raised $283,417 for his campaign against Jerry McNerney. He outraised and has more cash on hand than three-term incumbent McNerney.

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The -ermans: Having the DreamWorks trio headlining your fundraising efforts pays off. Howard Berman reported raising $818,769 compared to Brad Sherman's $151,207. Sherman still has $1.5 million more on hand than Berman's $2.2 million, which should be enough to pay for a website redesign.

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The retirees?: Dennis Cardoza gave the strongest sign that he's retiring, reporting only $23,150 raised and $62,472 cash on hand. David Dreier raised only $37,300, but has $774,464 on hand that he can use if he finds a district, and Jerry Lewis raised $43,750 and has 755,830 on hand.

A few weeks ago, The Washington Post profiled Gill and his fundraising prowess:

Much of that cash came from the Sikh community — where his parents are politically active — but also from small-busi­ness­ owners and residents of all stripes.

The impressive fundraising got Gill on the National Republican Congressional Committee’s ‘On the Radar’ list, and the party has been attacking McNerney with robocalls and ads.

Gill is downplaying his party affiliation — no surprise given the district’s Democratic tilt expected to materialize after redistricting.

The new bipartisan map will make the new 9th district about five points more Democratic — McNerney’s old 11th district was Republican-leaning, and he still survived the 2010 bloodbath. President Obama won the new 9th district by 15 percentage points in 2008.

Democrats will do everything they can to emphasize the R after Gill’s name.

Ricky Gill: Unconventional Republican

National Journal reports:

Ranjit (Ricky) Gill may be this year’s most unconventional Republican candidate for Congress.

Born and raised in Lodi, Calif., near Stockton, he is challenging three-term Democratic Rep. Jerry McNerney in the state’s highly agricultural 11th District, where the unemployment rate is about double the national average. Gill’s mother is from India; his father grew up in Uganda, but fled Idi Amin’s regime and earned his medical degree in Ireland. Both obstetricians, their medical practice has delivered close to 75,000 babies (a political gold mine) by Gill’s count. And they have somehow still found time to grow 1,000 acres of wine grapes.

An Indian-American, Gill may be the perfect GOP candidate for a district where non-whites are now 50 percent of all residents and Vietnamese and Filipino-Americans are numerous. He has an easy-to-pronounce name—his family chose to call him “Ricky” instead of “Randy” to avoid comparisons to pro wrestler “Macho Man” Randy Savage—not to mention moderate stances on social issues such as immigration. To top it off, he is a fundraising dynamo: he took in $420,000 in his first quarter of raising money, the third-best total among non-incumbent Republicans running for the House.

Last week, the Stockton Record reported:

Rep. Jerry McNerney announced Thursday he is running to represent Stockton for a fourth term.

The Pleasanton Democrat also announced he planned to relocate to San Joaquin County to live in a new congressional district that would hold all of Stockton, the northern half of San Joaquin County and a portion of eastern Contra Costa County.

Compared to the current boundaries, the new district outline is vastly different. However, both districts have the bulk of their voters in San Joaquin County.

It's a place McNerney said he's gotten to know well over the years, enough so to consider it home, he said. "I've worked hard in San Joaquin County," he said. "I think it's a good match."