The Trib has a great article detailing the issues Blair Hull faced in the primary. My argument about potential scandals or any information that may be detrimental is release it about two weeks after the formal announcement. Get the story on the radar of the news media, address it, and move on. If you wait it will kill you later. In Hull’s case it took him off message and killed the good momentum he had–ceding it to a very charismatic candidate (who I happened to favor). Like all news stories, I think the insiders would say it was more complicated, but the big issues are covered well.
But politicians running for high offices are kidding themselves if they think that a negative information will not come out. Sometimes that fact is unfair, most of the time given the past abuses by candidates, the voters should be able to judge someone in their entirety. That said, the problem of not controlling the release means that a candidate is judged on their worst days and not on their life as a whole often. Releasing on the candidate’s timetable allows he or she to put it into the context of their life. Allowing the press to do it gives them juiciness and makes them salivate at eating you alive.
I’ll note this is the first sympathetic article in the last month for Hull–after he lost.