Trackers follow candidates in hopes of capturing ‘gotcha’ moment

When Republican Rob McKenna lost his cool with a critic on the street and he told her to “get a job,” it was a rare slip in his highly disciplined campaign for governor.

It was pure gold for Zach Wurtz, who’s made his living the past two years following McKenna with a camera everywhere he goes in hopes of capturing just such a moment that can go viral and trip up the candidate.

Wurtz isn’t alone. He’s one of a growing number of political operatives paid to track candidates wherever and whenever possible, says Eli Sanders, a reporter with The Stranger who tells Ross and Burbank he decided it would be interesting to track the trackers.

“I found that they are just as driven and obsessed as the candidates themselves. You kind of have to be to follow a political candidate for years,” says Sanders.

He says both political parties have made trackers a regular part of their campaign operation since about 2006. Since everyone knows they’re there, it’s a big reason why candidates rarely go off script. In the Washington governor’s race, Sanders says it “reinforces Jay Inslee’s tendency to not say anything too surprising.”

“I think it has a lot of effect on the spontaneity of the rallies and the public moments. I mean Jay Inslee has not deviated from his talking points and it’s been very frustrating to people who have watched him closely through this entire campaign,” Sanders says.

A tracking gig is far from glamorous. Sanders says it takes a special kind of dedication and political zeal to travel the state sitting through every speech and rally.

“So imagine the fanatical drive that it takes to rush around and get to every public event. Try to get into some private events the candidate is holding, stand there, videotape, and not just fall asleep or collapse from boredom after you’ve heard the talking points repeated over and over again.”

Sanders likens the trackers to prospectors panning for gold, hoping for that rare nugget that can go viral on YouTube and trip up a candidate. They all aspire to capture something Virginia Senate candidate George Allen’s so-called “Macaca Moment,” where he called out a tracker at a 2006 campaign event who happened to be native American. Allen called him “Macaca or whatever his name is.” The racist remark went viral and he ultimately lost the election.

Sanders says the trackers hope to throw the candidates off their game at events, with Wurtz often staring at McKenna during events with “a big cheesy grin on his face.” But after closely surveying the trackers for the past few months, he doesn’t see anything wrong with what they do.

“It’s a little unseemly to the average person, but these people are running for high political office. The public does have a right to question them with whatever tools are available,” Sanders says.

And Sanders says he has some unsolicited advice for candidates who don’t want to be caught in an unflattering light by a tracker: Just don’t say anything; it makes for boring video.