Will McDaniel’s Scandal Containment Strategy Work?

Earlier this week, I wrote a story questioning whether or not Attorney General Dustin McDaniel could politically survive the scandal of an admitted affair.  Now that a few days have passed since the news first broke, let’s examine McDaniel’s strategy to get out of the mess he created.

Broadly speaking, there are usually two options for handling the news of an extramarital affair:

Option 1:  Hold a press conference, get all the information out there, publicly apologize and ask for forgiveness. If possible, have the spouse there by the candidate”s side showing support.  Yes, it’s incredibly awkward, and in some ways demeaning for the spouse, but for the politician to survive, the public must see that the spouse has forgiven the cheater. After all, if the spouse doesn’t forgive the candidate, why should the voters?

Option 2:  Release extramarital affair news via press release and decline to answer any further questions since it’s a family matter.  If the press asks the candidate about the affair, refuse to answer and refer back to the original statement. I call this the “Batten down the Hatches” strategy.

The advantage of Option #1 is it gets the story out there quickly and voters will see the politician being contrite and apologetic for his misstep.  Option #1 also allows for getting all the information out there at one time and limiting the number of news cycles the scandal is prominently mentioned in.

McDaniel’s campaign seems to going with Option #2 and while I personally don’t agree with it, I can understand some of the textbook logic of it.

As of right now, it appears Dustin McDaniel”s campaign scandal containment strategy seems to be this:  Publicly admit affair through one press statement, decline to personally answer any further questions on the matter and have spokespersons handle all inquiries.  Use the quirk of FOIA law to avoid giving press any official documents that may shed light on the matter.  Finally, use the Christmas holiday season as a buffer in hopes of keeping the press and public’s attention away from the story in hopes they’ll move on to something else.

Under textbook scandal circumstances, Option #2 might work.  The traditional Arkansas press corps is not normally known for in-depth investigative reporting and frankly Arkansas elected officials often get more of a pass than they do with other states” press corps.  The perfect example of this is the fact that this whole story was first reported by Talk Business, an online publication and not by a newspaper or television station. Limited traditional press resources in Arkansas translate into limited reporting and attention spans.

If this was a textbook case of a personal indiscretion, McDaniel might have been able to keep putting the Arkansas media off by saying it’s a family matter and his original statement is all he would ever say on it. That strategy, coupled with the holiday season where no one is paying much attention to politics, might have worked.

However, this is no longer a textbook case of an elected official having a personal indiscretion.

For example, when you hear a sentence that reads roughly, “In February, McDaniel’s mistress was led away in handcuffs after a police found a murdered man in her driveway.” it means the scandal containment textbook goes out the window.

McDaniel’s former mistress”s messy professional and personal life is keeping the story alive in the press which keeps it in front of the public.

Moreover, it was revealed yesterday that the Attorney General’s office had been involved in a total of 5 legal cases with Andi Davis, McDaniel’s mistress.

McDaniel’s spokesperson says the Attorney General had no direct involvement with Davis’s cases, never spoke with her about the cases and there was no conflict of interest.

McDaniel has been able to hide behind spokespeople over this affair, since the story started off as a personal indiscretion and in many ways the affair is really nobody’s business except for his family.

But now that this affair has seeped into his role as an elected official, it means the Attorney General must address the concerns of conflict of interest directly.  Frankly, it comes down to a matter of trust. Voters can casino online forgive a personal indiscretion, but once you lose their trust as an elected official, you’ve lost it forever.

Also, to the general public using FOIA law exemption granted to the Attorney General’s office to deny media access to public documents makes it seem like there is a cover-up.  Let me hasten to add, I don’t believe that to be the case, but that is how it will be perceived by most people.  And it’s often never the crime that brings politicians down, but the cover-up, or the appearance of a cover-up.

Can we trust that McDaniel never discussed these cases with Davis and did not directly intervene?  Did his staff know about his relationship with Davis and could that have caused them to be deferential to Davis?

We need to hear directly from McDaniel on these and other questions.  Voters will want to look into McDaniel’s eyes to see the truth for themselves.

I’m beginning to wonder if McDaniel needs to ditch the textbook crisis management manual and speak directly to the media answering these legitimate questions. Now that this matter has drifted over to his official role, the press has an obligation to have McDaniel go on record. Option #2 is no longer a viable option since his role as the state’s top law enforcement is slowly beginning to be called into question.

Also, McDaniel now has a major problem with his own party. I’ve talked with numerous Democrats across the state over the past few days and their reactions range from sad disappointment, to disgust, to red-hot anger.  Many feel let down and they’re beginning to wonder if he’s the strongest candidate for 2014.

What may save McDaniel in the primary is that folks at this time are not generally wild about the other two potential gubernatorial options, John Burkhalter and Bill Halter. But that could quickly change or another candidate may emerge.

One politico I respect noted that McDaniel’s own polling showed him losing to has-been candidate Asa Hutchinson prior to the scandal breaking and they wondered what the numbers will look like in light of this scandal. A valid concern.

On the whole I don’t think McDaniel’s team fully understood the totality of the problem they were facing with this scandal and miscalculated by going with the aforementioned Option #2.  We’re now on the third press day of this scandal and there will be more days to come.

Politically, McDaniel is still teetering on the edge of political oblivion.  To survive, he needs to move quickly and try something different or risk having this affair completely overshadow his gubernatorial race.