The candidate is sailing through the same speech at the third stop of the day, smiling at cheering supporters and their bobbing signs, when an angry voice unsettles the scene.
The heckler has cut in on the campaign dance, aiming to fluster and hobble the target.
“You, sir – you’re a pretender. You do not know the lord,” a man told Mitt Romney in February at a Florida campaign stop, attacking the Republican candidate for his Mormon faith.
More recently, a woman strode into a South Carolina rally for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton carrying a sign labeling the Democratic candidate a power-mad liar.
As presidential hopefuls step toward the 2008 primaries, the heckler (also known as the protester and aggressive blogger) is primed to throw sand in the oiled cogs of multimillion-dollar campaigns.
The ranks of these antagonists are growing as the Internet immediately transmits their confrontations to millions. They may be derided as fringe fanatics or applauded as First Amendment commandos, but no candidate can deny their right to express themselves.
So the question for Clinton, Romney and the rest of the pack is: How will I handle such rude interruptions without looking like a dope or a wimp on the evening news or YouTube?
“These unscripted moments are important,” Brown University political science professor Darrell West wrote in an e-mail, “because if candidates can’t handle a solitary heckler, voters will wonder if they will stand up to (Russian president) Vladimir Putin or (Venezuelan president) Hugo Chavez.”
Both Clinton and Romney reacted calmly during their confrontations.
“That’s all right. That’s all right,” Clinton said as her supporters booed and enveloped the woman holding the accusatory sign.
Romney, also smiling, listened quietly to his accuser. Supporters of the former Massachusetts governor booed, then cheered when Romney responded that the nation “does need to have people of different faiths, but we need to have a person of faith lead the country.”
“The one hard-and-fast rule is that you don’t want to lose your cool,” said Roy Occhiogrosso, a political consultant who has worked on the campaigns of several Democrats.
That’s especially important today, he said, because much of a campaign will be caught on video and immediately posted on the Web.
“A slip in New Hampshire used to be limited to New Hampshire,” he said. “Now it’s sent instantaneously worldwide, so the stakes have increased exponentially.”
Web posts can scuttle careers in politics and entertainment. Two prime examples from 2006 include comedian and “Seinfeld” actor Michael Richards’ racist tirade after he was heckled at a Los Angeles comedy club, and former Sen. George Allen’s re-election-destroying reference to a persistent videographer from his opponent’s camp as a “macaca,” a derogatory term for a dark-skinned person.
A recently released documentary film, titled “Heckler,” argues that hecklers “have grown not only more conspicuous in recent years but more scathing as more people feel emboldened to partake in public criticism, perhaps in part because the culture of blogs and online user reviews has created a climate where everyone is a critic [—] and a harsh one,” according to an April 8 article in The New York Times.
The rise of the heckler, however, is not necessarily bad news for candidates. Such confrontations can boost a politician’s image, conveying strength and quick intelligence.
During the battle last fall in Connecticut between Sen. Joe Lieberman and challenger Ned Lamont, both Democrats, the election’s third wheel, Republican Alan Schlesinger, emerged as a take-charge guy.
Hecklers already had interrupted an October debate once when a deep-voiced man began singing as Lieberman delivered his closing statement. Lieberman’s pleas – “Come on …” – were ineffectual, and Lamont stayed silent on his stool. But Schlesinger stepped forward and yelled, “Show some respect to Sen. Lieberman! Leave this audience now! Enough!”
“It’s too bad Al didn’t have another million dollars,” state Republican State Chairman Chris Healy said. “That was Al’s defining moment. In this day and age, when everything is so scripted, these moments are jewels.”
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