Eye of the beholder: defining negative campaigning.

Since the 1984 presidential race was a snoozer that would result in Ronald Reagan's 49-state landslide reelection victory, much of the political world turned its gaze to North Carolina. There, a brawl of a Senate race had begun more than a year and a half before Election Day; the incumbent senator, Republican Jesse Helms, was locked in a bitter fight with Gov. Jim Hunt, a rising Democratic star.

Helms did not usually like to debate opponents, relying instead on television advertisements that blanketed the Tar Heel State during election season. But the famously conservat