A DAY OF THRUST AND PARRY

Incumbent Cites Old Writings; Democrat's Defense Is Offense

LOUISVILLE -- Rep. Anne M. Northup looked pleasant and motherly in her
honeydew-green blazer, her smile as sweet as iced tea. "It's good to
see all my friends here," the Kentucky Republican said in greeting the
handful of reporters who braved strong wind and rain for an
early-morning news conference.

Dead silence.

Then it was down to business. Friday's business for Northup was the
attempted disembowelment of Democratic challenger John Yarmuth. Her
weapon was Yarmuth's own words, preserved in a stack of newspaper
columns that Northup brandished at the podium.

Voters, she warned, should know that the Democrat wanted to punish SUV
owners, endorsed the legalization of marijuana and was all in favor of
teenage drinking. "Parents should be concerned," she said, and so
should everyone else. "He has a lot of goofy ideas."

Northup perhaps did not provide the most fair-minded interpretation of
what Yarmuth had written as a columnist for the Louisville Eccentric
Observer. But nor were her descriptions necessarily so far afield. The
Democrat did once back taxes on gas-guzzling vehicles, some of which
are manufactured in the district. He wrote a column about prison
crowding that praised Canada for decriminalizing pot, and he suggested
that lowering the drinking age to 18 is "something we should consider."

The GOP strategy in this competitive race is to shower Yarmuth's
newspaper musings with a lot more attention in 2006 than they got when
he penned them years ago. The Democrat is the founder of the Eccentric
Observer, an alternative newspaper that may prove to be a tad too
alternative for the Kentucky 3rd's conservative voters.

The day offered a vivid -- and at times bizarre -- window into the
not-so-subtle art of the political attack. Northup and her campaign
team have been sitting on the columns since early in the summer,
savoring their possibilities and waiting for the right moment to drop
them for maximum impact.

That moment came 46 days before Election Day. The first blow was the
news conference at Northup headquarters, which is sandwiched between a
laser-tag playground and a comic-book store. This was followed by the
biggest television-advertising buy of her campaign. Northup plans to
make the columns the centerpiece of her campaign from now to Nov. 7.

The strategy's launch made for an emotional day. As the news
conference continued, Northup took on an agitated, apparently angry
demeanor. Her voice rose as she recited her charges and parried
skeptical questions from reporters. She looked through her stack of
columns, looking for the one in which Yarmuth said voters like to be
"misled or spat on."

The House campaign here has only recently resumed. Northup's
30-year-old son died this summer from a heart problem, and both
candidates suspended most campaign activities until a few weeks ago.
At the news conference, Northup's eyes looked heavy and tired.

Usually, politicians drop their most damaging "opposition research"
without fingerprints, leaking it to a reporter or airing it through a
third party. Northup, by contrast, hurled her charge like an anvil
through glass.

The purpose is to make Yarmuth, an antiwar liberal who disagrees with
her on virtually every issue, an unacceptable alternative -- even to
many Democrats. They outnumber Republicans almost 2 to 1 here, which
has made Northup a prime target since her first victory in 1996.

Northup's aides were proud of their handiwork. Campaign manager
Patrick Neely encouraged Washington Post reporters to make a detour on
a nine-day tour of the region to be present for the news conference,
where, he promised, there would be a spectacle too good to miss.

There was a 27-inch TV to play a new attack ad and a flat-screen
monitor showing the new Web site that will walk voters through
controversial things Yarmuth has written and said.

The event lacked one key ingredient for a classic political knockout
hit: the element of surprise.

Yarmuth, of course, knew he had written the columns. He said he had
spent six weeks mulling the consequences of his columns before
deciding to run for the seat.

And he also knew that Northup wanted to use them. In July, the
representative staged a news conference outside the Eccentric
Observer. She demanded access to the only existing copies of Yarmuth's
writings in 800 editions of the paper. In a symbolic gesture, she
handed over her voting record, copies of which sit on a chair in the
editor's office to this day. The paper's editors agreed to allow the
Northup campaign to copy the columns, in the presence of a security
guard paid for by the GOP campaign. Yarmuth no longer has day-to-day
involvement with the paper, and the editor said he saw no reason not
to comply. Neely spent the next two months reading thousands of pages
of what Yarmuth had written and published.

Yarmuth also had an inkling that Northup was about to unveil the
fruits of her research. The night before Northup's news conference, a
Yarmuth spokesman warned reporters that things could "blow up."

The episode offered Yarmuth a chance to show his skill at one of the
least-appreciated moves in politics: self-defense. This requires
candidates to identify their weak spots before their opponents do.
Some candidates hire people to examine their pasts for any potential
vulnerability, be it a messy divorce, controversial votes in local
government or, as in this case, columns written at a time when a
political career was not an immediate concern.

Yarmuth and campaign manager Jason Burke spent lots of time preparing
their defense.

Coincidentally, one of the controversial columns Northup cited
included advice for politicians in a similar pickle. In January 2004,
he said the first principle of damage control is, "Under no
circumstance, admit you were wrong."

By lunchtime, a few hours after the Northup broadside, Yarmuth was
heeding his own advice. It was Burke -- not the candidate -- who
headlined a hastily arranged news conference inside the Democratic
candidate's office. Yarmuth was sequestered nearby.

Burke took to a makeshift lectern facing the same group of reporters
who had attended the Northup attack. He said he did not want to
dignify most of the charges with a response, even though "no one wants
to smack around people as much as I do." He then spent most of the
conference bashing Northup and ignoring the specifics of her
accusations.

Did the candidate advocate legalizing pot? "Ridiculous," he said. What
about lowering the drinking age? "Silliest thing I have ever heard."
He resorted to a form of political jujitsu popular among politicians
under siege: Attack the attacker. He said Northup backs President Bush
91 percent of the time. He implored reporters to ask her: "What are
you proud of?"

Burke said the candidate would not stoop to answering Northup's
charges himself, but the campaign manager did not seem entirely
confident in this strategy: "This might backfire, and people might
think he is ducking," he said. "But this is not your grandfather's
campaign."