Bathroom Stall Tactics

• There's a fine line between peeping tom and political tracker. This is the line.

Ohio Secretary of State and U.S. Senate hopeful Jennifer Brunner took a break from her statewide campaigning last Saturday to attend a forum for Cuyahoga County Executive candidates held at John Adams High School.

Designed to showcase the growing field of hopefuls to everyday voters, it also showcased the creepy tactics increasingly common in big-time political races.

As Brunner listened to the candidates from her seat in the second row, a young man at the front of the room trained a video camera on her throughout the session. Though he refused to respond to questions about what he was doing, he appeared to be a “tracker” for the campaign of Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher, Brunner’s Democratic opponent in the May primary.

A product of the YouTube generation, trackers are assigned to monitor the opposition’s every move on the campaign trail in hopes of capturing something wonderfully stupid, like most utterances by Joe Biden.
Loaded with riveting footage of a silent, attentive Brunner, the man continued to roll tape as she made her way to the restroom, at which point he adhered to tracker etiquette by waiting outside the stall.
The young auteur then followed Brunner to a brewskie fundraiser in her honor at P.J. McIntyre’s at Kamm’s Corners. He finally called it a night when the bar’s management politely invited him to put the @%$*# camera away. — Anastasia Pantsios