By admin 
PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Old videos and past controversies involving candidates are resurfacing as Election Day approaches, including video of Secretary of State candidate Alex Kolodin’s past encounter with police.
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Candidates face scrutiny over past incidents
Sheriff Mark Lamb has faced accusations over explicit text messages. Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs was cleared in a pay-to-play investigation by the state attorney general, also a Democrat. Video of Alex Kolodin’s run-in with police has also surfaced.
Political consultant Stan Barnes said opponents’ teams look for information from a candidate’s past to use during campaigns.
“In the age of the internet, in the age of aggressive politics, in the age of there are no rules, if you’ve got something in your past that you’re not proud of, that will not sit well with voters, you can bet your opponent is going to figure that out and exploit it,” Barnes said.
Barnes said most people have moments they are not proud of, but those moments can become campaign issues when someone runs for office.
“And it is proven to be one of the definitive movers of the electorate and the determiner of the winner in elections,” Barnes said.
Timing of attacks
Barnes said the timing of these types of stories is carefully planned.
“It is a consultant’s 101 playbook that timing is everything and you don’t want to reveal the big story,” Barnes said.
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“If a scandal happens early in the game, that scandal can be forgotten or forgiven or otherwise just ameliorated or mitigated. But if it happens right when people are getting red hot live ballots on their kitchen table, then it’s in the moment and there’s a movement by voters to react to that very thing,” Barnes said.
Getting ahead of the story
Barnes said one move a candidate can make is to address their past before opponents do.
“We’ve actually seen presidential candidates adopt that theory. George Bush, George W. Bush, when he ran for president, wrote a book and in the book talked about receiving a DUI and having problems with alcohol. Because he wrote about it in his own book, it was not useful to his opponents to condemn him because he actually talked about it in his own book. Barack Obama did something similar in his book,” Barnes said.
Barnes expects the biggest attacks against candidates currently running for office to land as early ballots start arriving in October.
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