Long before claims of Russian spies interfering in US elections, American politics were the target of intrigue and lies - cheating, subversion, data harvesting, disinformation, and political warfare are all bedfellows on the campaign trail.
Dirty tricks have been part of US politics since at least 1844 when presidential candidate James K. Polk was falsely accused of branding his slaves. We’ve gathered 10 of the most notorious scandals of the past 150 years - from the 1880 Morey Letter to the punchy 2020 Brooks Brothers Riot and Cambridge Analytica scandal that rocked the 2016 elections.
The 1880 Morey Letter
Who wrote the incendiary 1880 ‘Morey letter’ sent during the 1880 US presidential election? Republican candidate James A. Garfield supposedly posted it on House of Representatives stationery, implying he favored Chinese immigration in an era when many Americans were strongly opposed. The handwritten missive was addressed to H. L. Morey of the Employers Union - a recipient who didn’t actually exist. Garfield was outraged but he was still elected with the smallest margin in US history. Were opposition candidates to blame? Democrats pounced, apparently circulating thousands of copies of the letter. The culprit may have been Stanley Huntley, however, a Brooklyn Eagle journalist and creator of the Spoopendyke stories who mocked the letter in an article. More than a century later, no one is certain.
Actor and former US President Ronald Reagan
October Surprises & Conspiracy Theories
The phrase ‘October Surprise’ stretches back to ‘68 when President Lyndon Johnson declared a halt to bombing in Vietnam, and 1972 when Richard Nixon’s Secretary of State declared “Peace is at hand” in Vietnam. Both announcements were seen as an attempt to influence voters on the eve of the elections. It was the Carter-Reagan October Surprise that still riles conspiracy theorists, however. A key issue involved dozens of American hostages held in Iran. Minutes after Reagan’s inaugural address, Tehran released the hostages, leading to speculation that Reagan’s campaign was conspiring behind the scenes - undercutting Carter’s government - to give his early months a huge popularity boost. More than a decade and two inquiries later, there’s no credible evidence, however. Regardless, Ex-Naval intelligence officer Gary Sick questioned the timing and whether a secret deal took place.
Richard Nixon sweats it out on live TV
Kennedy vs. Nixon debate
The 1960 presidential election was a case study in dirty tricks, pitting Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy against Vice President Richard Nixon. ‘Tricky Dick’ fell victim to accusations of ballot-stuffing but it was a series of live television debates that may have sealed Nixon’s fate. Both candidates reportedly broke their agreement to avoid using make-up on TV (although both also denied it). While JFK maximized his appeal as a cool contender, Kennedy’s team secretly turned up the temperature in the TV studio knowing Nixon was prone to sweating. Nixon, only four years older than JFK, repeatedly dried his face with a handkerchief before a TV audience of 70m. Although political scientists still debate it, Kennedy’s commanding win may have been down to a twist of the thermostat.
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Long before claims of Russian spies interfering in US elections, American politics were the target of intrigue and lies - cheating, subversion, data harvesting, disinformation, and political warfare are all bedfellows on the campaign trail.
Dirty tricks have been part of US politics since at least 1844 when presidential candidate James K. Polk was falsely accused of branding his slaves. We’ve gathered 10 of the most notorious scandals of the past 150 years - from the 1880 Morey Letter to the punchy 2020 Brooks Brothers Riot and Cambridge Analytica scandal that rocked the 2016 elections.
The 1880 Morey Letter
Who wrote the incendiary 1880 ‘Morey letter’ sent during the 1880 US presidential election? Republican candidate James A. Garfield supposedly posted it on House of Representatives stationery, implying he favored Chinese immigration in an era when many Americans were strongly opposed. The handwritten missive was addressed to H. L. Morey of the Employers Union - a recipient who didn’t actually exist. Garfield was outraged but he was still elected with the smallest margin in US history. Were opposition candidates to blame? Democrats pounced, apparently circulating thousands of copies of the letter. The culprit may have been Stanley Huntley, however, a Brooklyn Eagle journalist and creator of the Spoopendyke stories who mocked the letter in an article. More than a century later, no one is certain.
Actor and former US President Ronald Reagan
October Surprises & Conspiracy Theories
The phrase ‘October Surprise’ stretches back to ‘68 when President Lyndon Johnson declared a halt to bombing in Vietnam, and 1972 when Richard Nixon’s Secretary of State declared “Peace is at hand” in Vietnam. Both announcements were seen as an attempt to influence voters on the eve of the elections. It was the Carter-Reagan October Surprise that still riles conspiracy theorists, however. A key issue involved dozens of American hostages held in Iran. Minutes after Reagan’s inaugural address, Tehran released the hostages, leading to speculation that Reagan’s campaign was conspiring behind the scenes - undercutting Carter’s government - to give his early months a huge popularity boost. More than a decade and two inquiries later, there’s no credible evidence, however. Regardless, Ex-Naval intelligence officer Gary Sick questioned the timing and whether a secret deal took place.
Richard Nixon sweats it out on live TV
Kennedy vs. Nixon debate
The 1960 presidential election was a case study in dirty tricks, pitting Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy against Vice President Richard Nixon. ‘Tricky Dick’ fell victim to accusations of ballot-stuffing but it was a series of live television debates that may have sealed Nixon’s fate. Both candidates reportedly broke their agreement to avoid using make-up on TV (although both also denied it). While JFK maximized his appeal as a cool contender, Kennedy’s team secretly turned up the temperature in the TV studio knowing Nixon was prone to sweating. Nixon, only four years older than JFK, repeatedly dried his face with a handkerchief before a TV audience of 70m. Although political scientists still debate it, Kennedy’s commanding win may have been down to a twist of the thermostat.
Senator Edmund Muskie was the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in 1972 when a non-existent New Hampshire citizen wrote to the editor of the Manchester Union Leader accusing the candidate of using a derogatory word to describe French Canadians. The letter was actually written by Kenneth Clawson, a White House aide to President Nixon. The Manchester Union editor then insulted Muskie’s wife and the candidate appeared to cry during a press conference - snowflakes may have been to blame - but the damage was done. Muskie lost the nomination to George McGovern, who was crushed by Nixon. Within two years, however, Nixon resigned, brought down by the very underhanded tactics he’d used to win.
Republican political consultant Rod Shealy
Rod Shealy, fined $500
South Carolina has a reputation for political tricks, partially thanks to a scandal involving Republican political consultant Rod Shealy who was convicted of campaign finance charges linked to a bogus 1990 Congressional candidacy. Shealy, hoping to help his sister’s campaign, recruited a black man facing felony charges to run for office in order to attract the ire of white voters and ensure a large turnout. The stunt left Shealy with a $500 fine on a misdemeanor for failing to declare a $5,000 contribution.
Harry Dent, politician turned minister
Harry Dent
The Shealy case resonated in the state, home to Harry Dent, the political wizard credited with crafting Nixon's 1968 Southern strategy which capitalized on angering white voters by promoting civil rights advances by blacks. Dent’s supporters called his strategy a ‘legitimate appeal’ to voters on the sidelines and he was rewarded with a post as Nixon’s special counsel. In 1974, Dent pleaded guilty to aiding an illegal White House fund-raising operation. A federal judge described Dent as “more of the victim than the perpetrator” and gave him one month’s unsupervised probation.
Presidents George G.W. Bush Sr. and George W. Bush (right)
The Bush clan & Republican bad boy Lee Atwater
Republican campaigner and G.O.P. bad boy Lee Atwater ran George H.W. Bush’s campaign team, a campaigner so notorious he pops up with his own Top 10 Dirty Tricks list. “His [unfinished] memoir suggests that Atwater’s tactics were a bridge between the old Republican Party of the Nixon era, when dirty tricks were considered a scandal, and the new Republican Party of Donald Trump, in which lies, racial fear-mongering, and winning at any cost have become normalized,” the New Yorker reported in 2021. Atwater mastered the dark arts as a schoolboy. One of his best-known antics involved linking Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis - G.W. Bush’s Democratic presidential challenger - to Willie Horton, a paroled convict on a crime spree, inciting fear that Dukakis would be soft on crime. Atwater later publicly apologized to Dukakis.
US war hero and presidential candidate John McCain and his wife Cindy (left)
John McCain's 'illegitimate' child
By 2000, Republican Governor George W. Bush of Texas was running against a seemingly unstoppable Arizona Senator John McCain. Using a ‘phony poll’ strategy, McCain opponents were asked if they’d be more or less likely to vote for John McCain if they knew he’d fathered an illegitimate child. Bush’s campaign denied spreading any rumors. McCain and his wife Cindy, who had adopted a girl in 1991, set up a ‘Truth Squad’ to combat all of the lies and misinformation targeting their campaign but still lost the South Carolina primary and the nomination.
The Brooks Brothers 2000 Riot - a hint of things to come?
The Brooks Brothers Riot of 2000
Did the Brooks Brother Riot sow the seeds of the 2016 insurgency and 2021 Capitol riots? In 2000, as the US endlessly debated ‘hanging chads', Presidential candidate Al Gore battled it out in Florida with George W. Bush. Meanwhile, the US was under siege by a group of dapper men in expensive chinos who swarmed a government building in Miami-Dade county. The rowdy crowd shouted, punched, and demanded the halt of the ballot recount. Rather than a grass-roots movement, however, the demonstrators appeared to be Republicans (not so cleverly) disguised in Brooks Brothers clothing. “They were tweedy,” Joe Geller, chair of the Miami-Dade Democrats, told the Washington Post. “They were dressed the way someone would in Washington in November." Plus, there wasn’t a QAnon shaman among them.
Cambridge Analytica and the 2016 US election
Cambridge Analytica made the headlines in 2016, accused of misusing the personal data of up to 50m people on Facebook as part of political consulting work that included President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign. The company suspended British CEO Alexander Nix for making claims about bribing politicians and entrapping them by ‘sending some girls’ over. Nix was banned from running a company for seven years in 2020 after links to unethical behavior that included bribery, honey trap stings, voter disengagement campaigns, obtaining information to discredit political opponents, and spreading information anonymously in political campaigns. Rather than apologize, Trump seemed to gloat about using Cambridge Analytica to beat Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
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