Online sites are the new line of political attacks

WASHINGTON -- One GOP website last week launched an unflattering photo of Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, next to a series of suitcases that pop open to expose ''Bob's Baggage."

Another site shows Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, in a doctored photo with a crown on her head. Rick Santorum is excoriated in numerous liberal attack sites, including one that equates the Pennsylvania Republican's name with crude sexual references.

Once a boon to candidates who wanted to market their positions to a wide, online audience, the Internet has increasingly become a forum to establish a line of attack and create a potentially devastating caricature of an opponent.

Where these attack sites once were the work of Internet denizens with gremlin-like anonymity, now the parties are getting involved.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has attracted more than a quarter of a million hits to ''Fancy Ford," a site that ridicules Representative Harold Ford Jr. for the Tennessee Democratic senatorial candidate's alleged penchant for expensive suits and ritzy hotels.

Democrats have responded with a similar site aimed at Senate majority leader and potential presidential candidate Bill Frist, the Tennessee Republican, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is working on two other sites dedicated to defeating vulnerable Republican candidates, DSCC spokesman Phil Singer said.

With the websites, ''You can paint a more complete picture" of an opponent, explained Dan Ronayne, spokesman for the Republican senatorial committee.

Since the postings -- which often combine lampoon images with lengthy written attacks on the candidates -- are protected as free speech and not governed by campaign finance laws, there isn't much that an aggrieved candidate can do. But campaign officials read the sites closely, anxious to find out what the opposition is spreading about them.

''Negative campaigning is not new. But the Internet in a way makes it a little easier to find the line of attack," said Ann Lewis, communications director for HILLPAC, Clinton's campaign committee.

With voters just beginning to pay attention to candidates running in the fall elections, opposing parties and activists are seeking to craft an image of a candidate that will linger in the public's mind and keep the targeted candidate on the defensive constantly.

The anti-Santorum sites, for example, portray the conservative lawmaker as a bigot. The anti-Ford site is built around an image of the dapper congressman as a vain, free-spending playboy, while the counter-site, veryfancyfrist.com, portrays Frist as someone who lives well off questionable investments, which are now under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The new Menendez site seeks to establish the Democratic senator -- appointed to the job by his Democratic predecessor, Jon Corzine, governor of New Jersey -- as being too cozy with the political establishment and moneyed interests, while sites aimed at Democratic Senate candidate Bob Casey Jr. call him too liberal for his home state of Pennsylvania.

''That's part of American politics," Casey said in an interview, shrugging off the sites. ''People have a First Amendment right to express their point of view."

The sites are benefiting from a ruling by the Federal Election Commission that said discourse on the Internet -- even vulgar or incorrect sites -- would remain free of regulations as free speech.

''You've got to leave someone the ability to operate their own website, and to protect bloggers" who post their opinions and essays on the Internet, said Representative Marty Meehan, a Lowell, Mass., Democrat who co-wrote the sweeping campaign finance overhaul legislation Congress approved in 2002.

On one occasion, a Clinton fan alerted Lewis to a posting on the Internet suggesting Clinton had supported the Islamic extremists who bombed the USS Cole -- rhetoric that angered Lewis but gave her the chance to shoot down a potential rumor before it assumed a life of its own -- something she might be unable to do with a pre-Internet whispering campaign.

The Internet ''clearly has changed the dynamics in important ways. It makes it much harder for them [opponents] to carry out totally under-the-radar attacks," she said.

Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, who runs the popular political website Daily Kos, said the attack sites serve to energize a party's core supporters against a rival candidate, whipping up anger.

''They're not the sort of things that change minds," he said, but the sites can generate media and direct public attention to a candidate's record or controversial statements.

Santorum, whom the Democrats consider the most vulnerable sitting GOP senator up for reelection this year, is the target of numerous websites dedicated to disparaging him.

Mike Panetta, who operates one of the sites, said he launched it in 2000 as a gateway to register voters and provide information about the campaign. But this year, he said, the site has taken on a more interactive quality, with contributors posting remarks. The site now commands 700 to 1,000 hits a week, he said.

Howard Heater, who runs another anti-Santorum site, said he bought several domain names in the hopes of selling them to ''rich Republicans" who would want them to promote the senator. He sold none, but developed electsantorum.com as a way to criticize the senator.

Santorum has a campaign website that is unusually rich in information and multimedia features. Surfers can watch Santorum's campaign ads, read his statements, view his schedule, and even read his personal blog as he campaigns for his third term. The website is meant to reach out particularly to younger people who spend more time on the Internet, spokeswoman Virginia Davis said.

The campaign monitors opposing websites but can't do much about critical postings, she said.

''People recognize that blogs are subjective," she said. ''And other bloggers will chime in with their side of an issue."