In American political jargon, an October surprise is a news event with the potential to influence the outcome of an election, particularly one for the U.S. presidency. The reference to the month of October is because the Tuesday after the first Monday in November is the date for national elections (as well as many state and local elections), and therefore events that take place in late October have greater potential to influence the decisions of prospective voters.
The term came into use shortly after the 1972 presidential election between Republican incumbent Richard Nixon and Democrat George McGovern, when the United States was in the fourth year of negotiations to end the very long and domestically divisive Vietnam War. Twelve days before the election day of November 7, on October 26, 1972, the United States' chief negotiator, the presidential National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, appeared at a press conference held at the White House and announced, "We believe that peace is at hand".[1] Nixon, despite having vowed to end the unpopular war during his presidential election campaign four years earlier, had failed to either cease hostilities or gradually bring about an end to the war. Nixon was nevertheless already widely considered to be assured of an easy reelection victory against McGovern, but Kissinger's "peace is at hand" declaration may have increased Nixon's already high standing with the electorate. In the event, Nixon outpolled McGovern in every state except Massachusetts and achieved a 20 point lead in the nationwide popular vote. The fighting ended in 1973, but soldiers remained in Vietnam until 1975.
Since that election, the term "October surprise" has been used preemptively during campaign season by partisans of one side to discredit late-campaign news by the other side.
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During the Vietnam War, the Republican challenger Richard Nixon feared a last-minute deal to end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war by President Lyndon Johnson, which would earn incumbent Vice-President Hubert Humphrey enough votes to win election as President of the United States in the 1968 Presidential election. After President Johnson announced a halt of the bombing of North Vietnam on October 30, 1968, Humphrey surged ahead of Nixon in the polls where days before they had been in a dead heat. Immediately attention was focused to the Paris negotiations where Nixon campaign foreign policy advisor Henry Kissinger was stationed. In her autobiography Anna Chennault directly addressed the allegation of an October Surprise when North Vietnam negotiators after speaking with ranking Nixon campaign officials (headed by Mr. Kissinger) walked away from the American delegation under President Johnson after being offered a better deal if negotiations began after the election. In a phone conversation between President Johnson and Minority Leader Senator Everett Dirksen (R-IL), Johnson singled out the Nixon campaign as the primary reason why negotiations had stalled and called him and his party "traitors". The Johnson administration never disclosed this change in fortunes or why the walk-out occurred since it might hang a cloud of illegitimacy between both candidates should either one win over the other.
During the Iran hostage crisis, the Republican challenger Ronald Reagan feared a last-minute deal to release the hostages, which might earn incumbent Jimmy Carter enough votes to win re-election in the 1980 presidential election.[2][3] As it happened, in the days prior to the election, press coverage was consumed with the Iranian government's decision—and Carter's simultaneous announcement—that the hostages would not be released until after the election.[3]
It was first written about in a Jack Anderson article in the Washington Post in the fall of 1980, in which he alleged that the Carter administration was preparing a major military operation in Iran for rescuing U.S. hostages in order to help him get reelected. Subsequent allegations surfaced against Reagan alleging that his team had impeded the hostage release to negate the potential boost to the Carter campaign.[4]
After the release of the hostages on January 20, 1981, literally twenty minutes following Reagan's inauguration, some charged that the Reagan campaign had made a secret deal with the Iranian government whereby the Iranians would hold the hostages until after Reagan was elected and inaugurated.[3]
Gary Sick, member of the National Security council under Presidents Ford and Carter (before being relieved of his duties mere weeks into Reagan's term)[5] made the accusation in a New York Times editorial[6] in the run-up to the 1992 election. The initial bipartisan response from Congress was skeptical: House Democrats refused to authorize an inquiry, and Senate Republicans denied a $600,000 appropriation for a probe.
Eight former hostages also sent an open letter demanding an inquiry in 1991.[6] In subsequent Congressional testimony, Sick said that the popular media had distorted and misrepresented the accusers, reducing them to "gross generalizations" and "generic conspiracy theorists." Sick penned a book on the subject and sold the movie rights to it for a reported $300,000.[7] His sources and thesis were contested by a number of commentators on both sides of the aisle.[8][9]
Bani-Sadr, the former President of Iran, has also stated "that the Reagan campaign struck a deal with Teheran to delay the release of the hostages in 1980," asserting that "by the month before the American Presidential election in November 1980, many in Iran's ruling circles were openly discussing the fact that a deal had been made between the Reagan campaign team and some Iranian religious leaders in which the hostages' release would be delayed until after the election so as to prevent President Carter's re-election"[10] He repeated the charge in "My Turn to Speak: Iran, the Revolution & Secret Deals with the U.S."[11][12]
Two separate congressional investigations looked into the charges, both concluding that there was no plan to seek to delay the hostages' release.[3] At least three books have argued the case.[13]
Just four days before the vote that year, Ronald Reagan's defense secretary Caspar Weinberger was implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal. Though he claims to have been opposed to the sale on principle, Weinberger participated in the transfer of United States TOW missiles to Iran, and was later indicted on several felony charges of lying to the Iran-Contra independent counsel during its investigation. Republicans angrily accused Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh of timing Weinberger's indictment to hurt George H. W. Bush's re-election chances, and on Christmas Eve 1992, in the waning days of his presidency, Bush pardoned Weinberger, just days before his trial was scheduled to begin.
Days before the November 7 election, Thomas J. Connolly of Scarborough, Maine, a prominent defense attorney and 1998 Democratic candidate for governor, confirmed to a reporter that Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush had been arrested for drunk driving in that state in 1976, a report which Bush himself confirmed in a press conference moments after it was revealed.[14]
The Los Angeles Times released a story about Arnold Schwarzenegger and subsequent allegations that he was a womanizer guilty of multiple acts of sexual misconduct in past decades. The story was released just before the 2003 California recall, prompting many pundits to charge that the timing of the story was aimed specifically at derailing the recall campaign.[15] It was not the only embarrassing story about Schwarzenegger to surface just days before the campaign: in addition, ABC News and the New York Times reported that in 1975 Schwarzenegger had praised Adolf Hitler during interviews for the film Pumping Iron, which was responsible for the bodybuilder-turned-actor's fame.[16] The twin controversies later led L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez to coin the term "gropenfuhrer" to describe California's governor-elect;[17] a series of "Doonesbury" strips made the term famous.
On October 27, the New York Times reported the disappearance of huge cache of explosives from a warehouse in al Qa'qaa (see Missing explosives in Iraq). The John Kerry campaign blamed the Bush administration for this supposed mismanagement; administration officials charged that the Times had gotten the story wrong, and that the explosives had been cleared from the storage facility before the looting was supposed to have taken place.
On October 29, the Arabic news agency Al Jazeera aired a video of Osama bin Laden (see 2004 Osama bin Laden video).[2] In a speech that justifies and takes responsibility for the actions of September 11th, bin Laden calls out the Bush administration and the American position in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "Your security does not lie in the hands of Kerry, Bush, or al-Qaeda," Osama claimed; "Your security is in your own hands."[18] This is believed to have helped President Bush's campaign as it thrust the War on Terrorism back into the public eye. There is debate as to whether bin Laden was aware of the effect the video would have on the elections; the "Bush bounce" from the video did not surprise most outside observers of the 2004 election.
It has been claimed that Saudi Prince Bandar cut the price of oil (thus reducing gas prices) to help ensure a Bush victory.[19] According to a 60 Minutes broadcast, "Prince Bandar enjoys easy access to the Oval Office. His family and the Bush family are close. And Woodward told us that Bandar has promised the president that Saudi Arabia will lower oil prices in the months before the election to ensure the US economy is strong on Election Day."[20]
The Mark Foley scandal, in which the congressman resigned over sexual computer messages he exchanged with underage congressional pages, broke on September 28, 2006 and dominated the news in early October. Bloomberg.com wrote, "The October surprise came early this election year...."[21] Allegations that both Republicans and Democrats had knowledge of Foley's actions months before the breaking of the story only fueled the speculation regarding the possibly politically motivated timing of the story's release.[22]
Two studies by The Lancet on mortality in Iraq before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq have been described as October surprises for the 2004 and 2006 elections.[23] Les Roberts acknowledged that the 2004 study was timed to appear just before the presidential election,[24] though he denied that it was meant to favor one candidate over another. Although the studies used standard epidemiological methods, political critics have dismissed the studies based on a variety of alleged shortcomings.[24]
News that the Saddam Hussein trial verdict would be rendered on November 5, 2006, just two days ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, led Tom Engelhardt of liberal magazine The Nation to dub it, on October 17th, the "November Surprise".[25] In a White House Press gaggle on November 4, 2006, a reporter implied that the timing of the verdict may be an attempt to influence the outcome of the November election, to which White House Press Secretary Tony Snow replied "Are you smoking rope?" Snow later told CNN's Late Edition that "The idea is preposterous, that somehow we've been scheming and plotting with the Iraqis".[26]