From what I've read about Fortyn, no smear campaign against him would have an effect.
At least you know something about him, which is more than most of us. Characterizations by left wing journalists about 'far-right' European parties mean almost nothing today. The Christian Democrats, who have governed Germany most of the time since WWII named their candidate a month or two ago, and he was also called 'far-right'. All we know about this guy based on this article is that he wants to restrict immighration. We know nothing about his other positions, or whether he used racist terminology.
That is correct. Fortuyn is very good at debating and knows his facts very well (he wrote 50 books and was a professor sociology). After the elections there was a debate about the upcoming national elections where Fortuyn and the other leaders of all parties were present. Melkert (from the PvdA, socialists) was angry and sad about his party's incredible loss and was taking it out on Fortuyn. Fortuyn kept his head and he really won the debate. The next day the newspapers wrote that Melkert really looked bad, so bad that now Wim Kok, the PvdA prime-minister will do the campeign from now on.