The Bulldog Bites Back

Rule #1:

Planning to run an underhanded hardball political campaign? Start by accusing your opponent of running an underhanded hardball political campaign, something you're above doing.

-- The Insider's Guide to Cut-Throat Campaigning, as interpreted by Yale University.

Alumni of Yale University have received some alarming mail lately. One letter came from the chair of the Association of Yale Alumni, or AYA. It warned fellow Elis about a scary man who has inserted himself into an election that begins next week for a seat on the Yale Corporation, its governing body.

Every year, alumni elect a representative to the board. It's usually a sleepy, genteel affair. The AYA picks a few unthreatening alums to choose from. But this year, the letter warned, a New Haven pastor named W. David Lee has bucked the rules.

"Contrary to tradition," the letter said, "Rev. Lee has undertaken a very active campaign for the position ... We therefore wanted to alert you that you may be contacted" by Lee's supporters. Lee petitioned his way onto the ballot.

The letter mentioned that the AYA had nominated someone to run against Lee: "Maya Lin, a nationally renowned artist and architect who has designed the Vietnam Memorial, the Civil Rights Memorial and the Women's Table at Yale."

The AYA followed a few weeks later with a flier called "Seven things you should know" about the upcoming election. It included a reminder that "Rev. Lee has chosen to mount an aggressive campaign soliciting political endorsements and using mass mailings [and] e-mail." His opponent, the flier misleadingly claimed, "has followed the customary practice of not conducting a campaign."

Attached to this flier was a reproduction of the AYA's supposedly neutral election Web site. It showed photos of Lin and Lee. It included flattering quotes from Lin. It included out-of-context quoted snippets from Lee that made him look like a hypocritical, dangerous enemy of all things Old Blue.

Worst of all, according to this scare mail, Lee has received $30,000 for his campaign -- from Yale's unions.

Now, now. Has the Yale bulldog turned just a bit catty?

Or, more likely, senselessly desperate?

The letters, like the rest of a well-orchestrated campaign by Yale, were transparent and downright dishonest. Yale is campaigning just as aggressively on behalf of Lin as Lee's backers are. It's spending more money, sending more mail and e-mail. And Yale, not Lee, is breaking tradition: Others have petitioned their way onto the alumni ballot (including the first Jew to win a seat on the Corporation, William Horowitz in 1965). But never before has Yale nominated just one candidate on its own, so that its hand-picked celebrity could have a clear shot at stopping someone with whom it feels uncomfortable.

Yale's fliers, part of a slick, $145,000-plus campaign, used the oldest trick in the campaign handbook, a variation on "the best defense is a good offense": Hide your own distasteful tactics (aggressive campaigning, character assassination) by blaming your opponent for using these tactics, all the while denying you're doing the same thing.

Two separate groups have bombarded alumni with anti-Lee, pro-Lin messages, including full-page attack ads in the Yale Alumni Magazine.

One group, of old-school Old Blues, calls itself Yale Graduates for Responsible Trusteeship.

"The issue is this," says the group's founder, former Yale Secretary Henry Chauncey. "If an individual candidate accepts funds from any group (labor, or football or music) he or she is inevitably obligated to that group."

"To the best of my knowledge, Ms. Lin has accepted no funds of any kind," says Chauncey -- whose group has raised and spent $80,000 in soft money for attack ads on her behalf.

Chauncey says he fears a trend of "special interests," from museums to different eras of alumni, demanding their own trustee seats, leading to a corporation full of members looking out for narrow interests rather than Yale's broader good. (Lee denies he'll be beholden to unions. He has publicly advocated their organizing drives and serves on the board of a union-funded think tank critical of Yale's administration.)