{"id":13867,"date":"2012-04-23T13:30:14","date_gmt":"2012-04-23T17:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=13867"},"modified":"2012-04-23T13:30:14","modified_gmt":"2012-04-23T17:30:14","slug":"inside-the-minds-of-a-democratic-opposition-research-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/13867\/inside-the-minds-of-a-democratic-opposition-research-team\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the Minds of a Democratic Opposition Research Team"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roll Call<\/a> has a behind-the-scenes look at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee\u2019s opposition research team, and the findings aren\u2019t pretty.<\/p>\n

As any number of elections have taught us, a candidate\u2019s personal history is just as relevant to voting decisions as his or her policy stances.\u00a0 What makes the profile of the DCCC outfit stomach-churning, however, is the glee staff members exude from discovering the lowest points of other people\u2019s lives:<\/p>\n

Diana Asti, a newly promoted research analyst, finished a 204-page book on a target following seven days on the ground, 30 Freedom of Information requests and finding every word from the candidate ever on record. That morning in the DCCC\u2019s second-floor conference room, Asti finally had the opportunity to reveal one of her biggest discoveries about her target: his secret first marriage.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy head just went in all different directions, like maybe they\u2019ve divorced and he hasn\u2019t paid alimony, or maybe he has a child and he hasn\u2019t paid child support,\u201d exclaimed the 23-year-old Asti afterward in an interview. \u201cI went into a million different directions of what this could possibly be. It was a very exciting moment.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In case you\u2019re wondering, the reason so few politicians seem \u201creal\u201d is because they live in fear of people like Diana Asti.<\/p>\n

And let\u2019s not forget her colleague Jonathan Pullum, a man who confesses the following desire whenever he sees his Republican target:<\/p>\n

Occasionally, Pullum still sees his quirky research subject around Capitol Hill. Johnson doesn\u2019t know the 24-year-old from any other young staffer, but Pullum describes his reaction as giddy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have this real desire to be like, \u2018How\u2019s it going, buddy? Let\u2019s talk about your diet,\u2019\u201d Pullum said. \u201cIt\u2019s all these bizarre things that you know.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bizarre, indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roll Call has a behind-the-scenes look at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee\u2019s opposition research team, and the findings aren\u2019t pretty. As any number of elections have taught us, a candidate\u2019s personal history is just as relevant to voting decisions as his or her policy stances.\u00a0 What makes the profile of the DCCC outfit stomach-churning, however, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2033,1193,1083,2026,3493],"class_list":["post-13867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-2033","tag-campaign","tag-dccc","tag-election","tag-opposition-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13867"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13870,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13867\/revisions\/13870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}