Senate campaign mailing sets off furor

If A.B. Swindell, the incumbent in the 10th N.C. Senate District race, wanted to liven up an otherwise dull contest, he has succeeded. His mailing this week portraying his Republican opponent, Buck Newton, as a drug-dealing felon certainly was an attention grabber. The slick mailing with ominously dark background, what appears to be cocaine and a police officer and flashing lights, gets this message across: "Buck Newton. 8 felony drug counts, including selling cocaine. Is that who you want to be your senator?" Inside the flier, the Swindell camp says court records show Newton "was arrested on 8 felony drug counts."

A printout of court records show Newton was charged, but it also shows in each case the charge was "dismissed by DA." That should tell you something, and it should also have warned the Swindell camp to be cautious about this. Moreover, Newton has been practicing law in Wilson for years. If he were a convicted felon, he couldn't be admitted to the bar. Something doesn't click here, despite the N.C. Democratic Party's shocking mailing.

Newton has produced a letter from the district attorney and an affidavit stating that the charges were a case of mistaken identity and that the undercover officer responsible for the charges was dismissed from the police force. All of this happened 20 years ago when Newton was a student at Appalachian State University.

The justifiably outraged Republican candidate has said he is filing a defamation lawsuit against Swindell and the Democratic Party. He says the assertion that he was arrested is patently false, that he was never arrested on these charges and that they were quickly dropped when the mistaken identity became apparent. A friend sent me an audio file of Newton's appearance on the "DP in the Morning" show on the Jammin' 99 radio station. Newton rants for most of the 17 minutes of the file, barely allowing any questions or comments as he expresses his righteous indignation and scathingly critiques Swindell, whom he calls "Alvin," as "a liar."

Newton may be outraged, angry and disgusted, but he probably also knows that he has little chance of winning a defamation suit against Swindell and the Democratic Party. It's hard to win a libel suit — as it should be — and courts tend to give campaigning politicians a lot of leeway. Will a judge or jury make a distinction between being "charged" and being "arrested"? Or will the court find that to a lot of people, there's not a lot of difference? No matter what the outcome, this lawsuit will drag on long after the last vote is counted.

The question is why Swindell, a 10-year incumbent and a player in Senate President Marc Basnight's power structure, would stoop to this incendiary and misleading flier. Swindell has not been seriously challenged before, so he must think it is necessary to bring out the heavy artillery against Newton.

The second question is what will be the consequences. This mailing could well backfire against Swindell if enough voters see it as a desperate attempt at character assassination. For North Carolina legislative races, this is about as low as campaigning gets.