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a fierce campaign in which the Gorton campaign simply lost. This logic is consistent with the
“constant crisis” view of campaign crises.
External crisis are what most people think of when they think about campaign crises.
External campaign crises are usually public, and usually happen to or around the campaign faced
with crisis. “Attacks” and “strategic disruptions” are the major crisis frames falling under the
external dimension. “Media” crises are another major component of the extension dimensions.
The external dimension of campaign crises can either be tactical or contextual (which
could be a further division in the typology if future researchers felt a need for narrower
categories). Tactical events are those political professionals can make some reasonable attempt
to control. The 2002 New Jersey Senate race provides an illustration. In a tactical legal move,
Bob Torricelli’s attorneys fought a losing court battle against a media effort to unseal a secret
government memo outlining allegations made against the senator by campaign contributor David
Chang (representing a “candidate scandal”). However, the Torricelli team also argues that a
poisonous campaign context (a strategic disruption), which they attribute largely to the media (a
“media” crisis”), made normal campaigning impossible. The media feeding frenzy was
supplemented by continual attacks from Republican opponent Doug Forrester. To make matters
worse, both sides were plagued by “organizational” and “candidate political error” crises. On the
“organizational” front, the Torricelli staffers report a crisis of information because of firewalls
between Torricelli’s legal defense team and campaign staff, which hampered the campaign
staff’s ability to anticipate and respond to external crises in the form of attacks and strategic
disruptions. The Forrester team suffered an organizational crisis when they failed to conduct
sufficient “self-research” on Forrester and a reporter discovered old newspaper columns in which
Forrester made about gun control which were inconsistent with New Jersey’s liberal political
Convention