Attack Ads

see also negtive ads (no distinction, possibly older)

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Lee Atwater pioneered oppositional research?

Famous LBJ ad on Goldwater flower petal countdown.

Mudslinging in partisan newsapapers goes way back eg Jackson.

However, ads designed purely for driving up negatives (providing no real info or verification of claims) is relatively recent, and big hidden money makes it a much more important issue.

a new low/ puerto rico debt:

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Corporate lobbying is often constrained by the need to play the long game. Sometimes a company, or an entire industry, realizes it needs to take a loss today, but will be back tomorrow to fight again. That can encourage corporate actors to rely more on carrots: Campaign contributions and cushy jobs are in store for staffers and members of Congress who play nice.

But because the hedge funds are fighting over a different bet each time — Argentina today, Fannie and Freddie tomorrow — the most bang for the buck may come from a run ofnegative TV ads in key congressional districts, or targeted campaigns against leading members of Congress on the wrong side.

Or even against staffers. In the midst of the debate over how to restructure Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in early 2014, Jim Millstein was sitting down on Capitol Hill with Michael Bright, an aide to Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who was working on the legislation. Millstein, like other hedge-fund titans lobbying on the bill, had a set of structural recommendations he thought the Senate should take up.

Millstein was worth listening to: While a top Treasury Department official, he had overseen the successful restructuring of AIG after the government bailout. But Millstein had an extra recommendation: The Fannie Mae shareholders needed to be paid out — shareholders like Millstein.

The aide told Millstein he didn’t see why shareholders, who bought Fannie stock for pennies when the government had already bailed it out, needed a windfall. The meeting turned tense.“Don’t worry kid, you’re about to get yours,” Millstein said, according to a Democratic committee staffer later briefed on the episode. Bright, reached for comment, declined to speak for this article.

A week or so later, the conservative Free Beacon dropped a story headlined, “Banker Who Helped Crash Housing Market Helped Crafting Mortgage Reform.”

The headline was absurd — Bright had been a low-level trader at Countrywide Financial Corp. right out of college, hardly in a position to blow up the housing market. But the facts didn’t matter. With the story in print, political operatives could now put the claim on the airwaves, and for cover source it back to the Free Beacon, a neat trick since the same operatives may well have been the ones who fed it to the Beacon. Two weeks later, the 60 Plus Association, a conservative dark money group, put out an attack ad repeating the allegation that “a former Countrywide financial executive is even helping craft the legislation.” The ad ran in North Carolina, Virginia and Idaho, targeting specific lawmakers involved in the legislation.

The aggressive tactics appear to have included ethics complaints, too. Campaign for Accountability, a watchdog founded by former employees of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, filed complaints against Corker, the leading Republican sponsor of housing reform legislation with Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.). The complaints, filed in November, allege Corker engaged in suspicious stock trades.