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The original ‘October surprise’ didn’t actually happen.
It was the fall of 1980 and Ronald Reagan’s campaign team was worried that President Jimmy Carter could negotiate the release of Americans being held hostage in Iran just before the election and ride the wave of good publicity to a second term – an “October surprise,” as Reagan’s campaign manager William Casey dubbed it.
As it turns out, there was no surprise deal, and Reagan won – but the phrase stuck.
I’ve always had a soft spot for the origin story (in part, because, if you do the math and work backward from my birthday in late June 1981…well, the jokes write themselves…). But, in any case, the phrase is now shorthand for a phenomenon long predating the ‘80 election – breaking news that lands shortly before an election, leaving one candidate disadvantaged and short on time to recover.
Sometimes it’s a chance event that shifts the public conversation to one candidate’s strong suit – or one candidate does something heroic, criminal, or embarrassing that tilts their poll numbers. But in my experience, more often it’s a news story that’s been percolating for some time. The Access Hollywood tape of Donald Trump that dropped a few weeks before the 2016 election was from 2005; days before the 2000 election, the story of George W. Bush’s 1976 DUI broke. The Hunter Biden laptop probably belongs in this category, too (although with a bunch of caveats).
One of the first campaigns I covered closely was the 2018 state senate race between Republican incumbent Michael Lee and Democratic challenger Harper Peterson, the former Wilmington mayor. In the last week of the campaign, a state ethics commission complaint was filed against Lee, alleging he had used his “public office for private gain” based on work he'd been doing for years as a private real estate attorney helping to represent several major development projects.
The complaint was filed by Bill Shell, a former chair of the New Hanover County Republican Party who had changed his affiliation two years earlier. I pushed Shell on the suspect timing – he argued the projects had just been recently approved over the summer, also noting he’d dealt with an illness in the family, and that Hurricane Florence had put everything on hold for a month. For his part, Lee responded respectfully to my questions, though he took understandable offense to his ethics being questioned and called the story a politically motivated “stunt.”
I heard through back channels that StarNews was also prevaricating on the story. For context, two years earlier they’d run a very similar October surprise report on an ethics complaint filed against Democratic State Representative Susi Hamilton by the state GOP; like Lee, she’d dismissed the complaint as a political “act of desperation.” I imagine that set an editorial precedent that made the Lee story hard to ignore.
The complaint against Lee was my first October surprise as managing editor at Port City Daily – and it wasn’t an easy call. I had just started there two years earlier when PCD’s editor decided not to run the Hamilton story. I felt that had been a mistake, and I didn’t want to repeat it. So we decided to publish, as did several other outlets, including StarNews. We also published follow-up stories, including an unequivocal statement from Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo, a Democrat, that Lee had never abused his power.
A week later, Lee lost a very close election. Some people thanked me for helping Peterson win, while others called me a partisan hack for running the story – both made me feel pretty lousy. As a journalist, I had to ‘take the hits and keep on going,’ as NPR’s Scott Simon likes to quote Michael Jordan. (Lee, for what it’s worth, also took the hits and kept on going, winning his seat back in 2020 and keeping it in 2022).
I’ll say this: Lee probably wasn't a big fan of the story, but at least he didn’t pull a gun. That wasn’t the case for the October surprise I covered in 2021.
During that year’s Wilmington City Council race, Jonathan Uzcategui had proven to be one of the most bombastic candidates in recent history. A fiery Venezuelan-born MAGA enthusiast, Uzcategui loved ‘owning the libs,’ Jiu Jitsu, and preaching the evils of socialism.
Then, with just days left in the race, Uzcategui’s former wife posted claims of domestic abuse on Facebook. We vetted her identity and, through court records of protective orders and arrests (but no convictions), we were able to confirm some of her story. The timing was deliberate – while the alleged abuse had taken place over a decade earlier, the victim explicitly said she wanted to prevent Uzcategui from holding office.
In this case, the overt motive didn’t negate the importance of the story. So, I called Uzcategui and he agreed to an interview. We met in an RV parked by the Northeast Library polling location, a stronghold for GOP candidates. To his credit, Uzcategui answered all our questions, denying any physical abuse. It was overall a tense but civil conversation.
There was one moment that will forever stay with me though. While discussing Uzcategui’s run-ins with the law, he lifted his shirt, produced a small handgun, and set it down demonstratively on the table between us. You can hear the *thunk* on the recording.
To be clear, Uzcategui wasn’t threatening me. He was demonstrating that he had a concealed-carry permit, which he wouldn’t be able to get with a serious criminal record. I’ve been around guns enough to at least fake keeping my cool. I told him the permit itself would have probably sufficed, we had a little laugh, and continued the interview.
The story ran on a Friday afternoon. I went home and had a stiff Manhattan. Four days later, Uzcategui landed in the middle of a crowded field – not last, but about 2,000 votes shy of the top three.
October surprises don’t always happen in October, of course. In June of 2022, several sources shared concerning claims of harassment by Jason Minnicozzi, the Democratic candidate challenging Lee for his senate seat. Allegedly, Minnicozzi, an attorney, used his access to sensitive court records to contact and harass a domestic violence victim.
As with Uzcategui, the incident in question wasn’t recent – it had happened in 2015 – and the victim had shared their story explicitly to help keep Minnicozzi out of office. Unlike the Uzcategui story, though, there was no public court record to confirm the story, and initially both the state Democratic Party and Minnicozzi declined to comment. For a day, we debated what to do with the story. After speaking with the victim, and several other sources on background, we decided to run the story.
But, before we published, both Minnicozzi and the NCDP issued statements. Minnicozzi blamed fundraising shortfalls, making no mention of the allegations and suggesting he would run again when “the time is right.” NCDP, on the other hand, met the issue head on, writing in a statement, “harassment of any kind cannot be tolerated.”
For every October surprise, though, there are dozens of stories that we don’t run. Some are such obvious canards that they fall apart at the slightest inspection. Others are tougher calls – and some decisions I’ve wrestled with long after the fact. On the whole, I think WHQR has done a good job navigating the perennial minefield of fact and fiction leading up to the election.
But it’s tougher every year.
