Print edition: 
The 2012 campaign cycle has begun in earnest, because the dirty tricks have started.
Not surprisingly, Kansas Senate campaigns have produced the first monkeyshines of the cycle. Surprisingly, after the Republican-on-Republican violence of 2010, this time the Democrats and Republicans are going after each other.
In 2012 the Kansas campaign battleground is going to be the state Senate. Conservatives want to bring the Senate into alignment with the House, ideologically speaking. No fewer than five incumbent Senate Republicans are facing challenges from the right. But Democrats know they need to increase their total of eight members of the chamber.
During the 2010 cycle, Republican primary candidates took swings at each other through one of the more despicable dirty tricks available online: the hit blog. Using the anonymity available to anyone with an e-mail address, campaigns could attack each other at will and did.
The same tactics are emerging early in the 2012 cycle, but now the targets are across party lines rather than the Kansas GOP's usual circular firing squad. Sen. Kelly Kultala, D-Kansas City, will face former Sen. Mark Gilstrap for the seat next year and is already taking shots at her opponent. The election is a rematch of sorts, although Gilstrap used to be a Democrat. When a string of conservative votes drove then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to support Kultala over Gilstrap, resulting in her victory, Gilstrap left the party and switched to Republican. The bad blood from 2008 may have been part of the reason the campaign has gotten ugly quickly.
Kultala's staff bought MarkGilstrap.com and redirected traffic to her campaign webpage. But the truly shady tactic was the creation of a blog and Twitter account under the handle "Broken Kansas."
Anonymously created and managed for the single purpose of smearing other candidates without the regular political accountability that officially sanctioned attacks by campaigns, the hit blog is the new equivalent of the old gotcha question, "Senator, have you stopped beating your wife?"
Gilstrap's campaign should have purchased his domain name in advance, certainly, but the fact the Kultala campaign engaged in such a base strategy did not reflect well on her campaign.
Kultala admitted to Kansas Watchdog that a consulting firm, Tugboat Media, had purchased the Gilstrap domain: "After investigating, I learned that a member of a local consulting team I had recently hired to set up my campaign website and social media had purchased domains under the name of my opponent and redirected online searches to my campaign website. While I was unaware this tactic was being used, I take full responsibility. I've made it clear to my consultants that this is not how my campaign will be conducted."
Kultala deserves commendation for taking the hit and admitting her consultant's poor choice.
Attacks are common in politics and often provide useful information for voters. But attacks must be tied to someone accountable for the distortions and untruths that sometimes accompany them. The trend toward anonymous hit blogs threatens every campaign and should stop immediately.
