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Friday, February 4, 2000
People really can get sick of politics
Activist tried to infect Gary Bauer's New Hampshire campaign with the flu
By Lee Bowman
Scripps Howard News Service
Campaign dirty tricks took a new turn last month in the Iowa campaign of Republican presidential hopeful Gary Bauer when an activist-writer tried to infect the candidate with the flu.
Although the effort was unsuccessful, bioterrorism experts say the low-tech attempt underscores how vulnerable not only politicians but also athletes and business leaders might be to such clandestine personal assaults.
Dan Savage, a gay activist and Internet columnist from Seattle, described in the online magazine Salon how he volunteered for the conservative candidate's Iowa headquarters after coming down with the flu.
"My plan? Get close enough to Bauer to give him the flu, which, if I am successful, will lay him flat just before the New Hampshire primary," Savage wrote.
He went on to detail how he licked coffee cups and doorknobs and kept a pen in his mouth, which he handed to Bauer as he asked for an autograph when the candidate visited the headquarters.
Bauer campaign officials in Iowa, some of whom did come down with flu, are said to be considering assault charges against Savage, who also faces a possible voter-fraud complaint for falsely registering to vote in the Iowa caucuses.
David Siegrist, a research fellow at the Potomac Institute of Policy Studies in Arlington, Va., recalled that the largest biological attack recorded in the United States was carried out in a bid to influence an election.
In 1984, members of the Rajneeshee Cult, trying to win control of the local government in Wasco County, Ore., spread salmonella over salad bars in eight local restaurants, sickening more than 700 people. The idea was to keep longtime residents away from the polls, so cult members would make up a majority of voters.
While American political history contains a long litany of efforts to undermine or discredit opponents through a variety of means, "this kind of germ attack is spy stuff, delivering poison darts from the tip of an umbrella or making Castro's beard fall out," said Frank Hagen, a specialist in political crimes at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa.
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