The Dwight Drake (D) for Governor of South Carolina campaign put this creative web video out over the weekend. It has so far received extensive coverage. For a later entry into the race, Drake is looking for an angle on his opponents. He is connecting the video to a call to have Sanford’s removal from office brought before the Legislature in the next 30 days. A petition is linked to the video. The strategy to gain recognition and momentum seems to be working.

We’ll see if Sanford finishes his last 500.

Capitalizing on the swearing-in of Democratic Senator Al Franken, the NRSC released a web video last week with quite a message. 
 

 
The ad’s message seems to be a warning: with 60 Democrats in the Senate, the party has the magic number allowing them to pass any legislation they want. The Senate will approve government-run healthcare and higher energy taxes. Elimination of the secret ballot will pass. Negotiating with terrorists will no longer be off-limits. It’s a scary thought. 
 
The message appears to convey how NRSC wants Americans to know the Democrats are in charge. And when this administration’s economic policies fail to bring relief to the people, the Democrats are the only ones to blame.
 
The erratic motions of Franken portray the Democrats as crazed politicians. The newspaper quotations emphasizing “THEIR” distances and separates the Democrats and their policies from the will of American people. The music conjures up feelings of despair, as if mourning the death of accountability and partisan oversight.
 
Ads like this run over the next 18 months could be effective as long as current economic trends continue. Coupled with ads promoting Republicans as fiscally responsible and pro economic growth, the message could turn things around in 2010.

With the recent announcement of Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court, news agencies and partisan watch groups have eagerly taken on the job of defining this woman and what her appointment would mean for this country.

Sotomayor’s liberal leanings could greatly impact future decisions concerning hot-button social issues like gay rights and abortion. Comments made in lectures at Berkeley Law School and at Duke University are providing plenty of fodder for conservative opponents.

Coalition for Constitutional Values has released a nationwide ad campaign in support of Sotomayor’s nomination. With a six-figure buy, the thirty second commercial provides a brief biography and pictures of the potential Justice with Obama’s nomination speech emphasizing Sotomayor’s qualifications.

In rebuttal, but on a much smaller scale, conservative Judicial Confirmation Network’s attack ad uses Sotomayor’s Berkeley comment saying Latina women will more often make better decisions than white men to question her ability to provide “equal justice under the law.” The web ad is up on most major news sites and is being passed around via email through conservative activists.

Obama’s approval rating is high and the Democrats enjoy a majority in the Senate, making her confirmation likely. This brings up an important question: is it necessary or appropriate to run campaign-style ads for a Supreme Court Justice nominee? Sotomayor’s confirmation is dependent on the votes of a mere 100 senators.  Does publicizing the nominee to arouse public interest and opinion carry any weight? 

Neither ad mentions any of Sotomayor’s previous rulings that would give insight to her stance on any major issue. These ads provide no firm understanding of where she stands. Both rely on her character, which each side is easily manipulating in their favor.

Only time will tell; when hearings begin in July, we will see if ads have any effect in the court of public opinion or on partisan voting blocs.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, under new chairman JOHN CORNYN, has a new website and brand new spot targeting Senate Majority Leader HARRY REID.

The effort, the first targeting a 2010 senate candidate, flies under the website called www.REIDistributewealth.com .

The new spot, titled, “Trillion” was released this week.  The details of the broadcast buy are unclear. 

The NRSC’s interest in targeting Reid stem from what Republicans consider his staunch partisan approach and what appears to be his electoral vulnerabilities.

A Las Vegas Review-Journal article on Monday cited recent polling, by a conservative political action group, showing Reid vulnerable among Nevada voters.

Reid was viewed favorably by 47 percent and unfavorably by 47 percent of Nevadans surveyed by the Salt Lake City-based polling firm NSON Opinion Research for the Legacy PAC, a California-based activist group that hopes to target Reid for defeat in 2010.

In the survey of 400 Nevada voters, which carries a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points, 47.3 percent viewed Reid favorably, including 27.3 percent who had a very favorable view and 20 percent whose opinion was somewhat favorable.

Among the 46.8 percent who had an unfavorable opinion of Reid, 8.8 percent of those polled viewed him somewhat unfavorably, while a whopping 38 percent had a very unfavorable view.

If you read my post: Top 50 books for Political Operatives, you can probably tell that I take my political reading seriously. I recently stumbled upon an interesting new book that examines, one of my favorite topics, the use of emotional appeal in political advertising.

The book, titled, Campaigning for Hearts and Minds: How Emotional Appeals in Political Ads Work (Click here), is a must read for anyone interested in political media communications and advertising.

Author, TED BRADER, provides an in-depth analysis of varying political advertising strategies, with specific attention to non verbal cues, an aspect of political media rarely touched by others in academia.  He references and discusses well-known and obscure political advertising campaign tactics, which played an important role in recent and historical elections.

In his thorough examination, Brader makes a strong argument; that carefully crafted audio and visual elements used in political advertising effectively create an emotional appeal which has an intrinsic dramatic effect on viewer/voting audiences.

In 2006, I wrote a piece for Politics Magazine (aka Campaigns & Elections), which I similarly argued that emotional appeals are the strongest form of political communications and advertising.

While my piece dealt more specifically with the use of images and symbolism related to September 11th in political advertising, I held that content and techniques used to create emotion is critical for maximizing moving voter opinion and creating action.

Here’s some relevant highlights from my piece:

Provoking emotion is one of the most important aspects to any political activity. 

Successful campaigns usually create a situation or series of situations that draw emotion from audiences – constituents or voters.  Emotional connections made in speeches, press releases, direct mail pieces or television spots are fundamental to controlling the message and the issues in an election.

Emotional appeals almost always trump rational appeals when attempting to gain political support or create negative views about an opponent.  Voters are more apt to create positive or negative feelings about an issue or candidate through emotions and sentiments rather than rational or logical arguments.

Campaigning for Hearts and Minds goes into much greater depth in making this argument.

(more…)

Here’s an interesting question posed by an old friend of mine who is not in politics, but who works in television and film production. 

“In this election cycle, political ads have made a turn from skewing reality in ones own favor to, at times, outright lying.  Is this going to completely backfire on candidates and those who make these ads?  Look at it this way, political ads do work, particularly with swing-voters (who these “swing-voters” are and why they haven’t made up their mind yet in these divided times is a topic for another day) but if people start feeling like they are outright being lied to it stands to reason that ALL political ads will start to lose there ability to persuade.  This is why governing bodies in advertising censor agencies and brands that lie as they know that negatively effect everyone in this business.”  

Recently, several ads have made it to air in the presidential election that have gotten quite a few people in the media and on the internet pretty riled up.  One spot, created by the McCain campaign received a significant amount of attention, accusing Barack Obama of supporting teaching sex education to kindergartners.  While the McCain campaign defends it’s spot, the Obama campaign called the spot untrue and claimed it was a distortion of Obama’s stance.  Who can you believe?

Now let’s get to answering my friend’s question(s)

For those in politics, ads this cycle do not appear anymore harsh or nasty than any other cycle prior.  When you’re in this business long enough you get to see some very heavy hitters.  However, there is a markable difference between heavy hitting negative attacks and clearly untrue attacks.

The gray area in campaign attacks come when a campaign and their team takes a shred of truth and crafts an entire ad around it, making further insinuations and accusations that fall far from the actual truth itself.  But any legitimate political media consultant will not create all out lies.  Lies do tend to backfire on campaigns that dispense them.

When any campaign runs a demonstrably false ad or makes false claims it risks exposing itself to multiple forms of backlash that exist in the political theater.  Below I have listed the forms of potential backlash that a campaign exposes itself to when it takes a path of false attack.

VOTER BACKLASH – As I have discussed in this space prior, the American public no longer detests negative campaigning and contras advertising.  They have come to accept it as normal practice and welcomed aspect to our political election process.  However, people do not have any tolerance for attacks that are far-fetched, untrue, racially biased / sexist, character assassinations or attacks on families or other deeply personal attributes.  Attacks of this nature tend to draw immediate backlash from the voters, who make their own judgements and who will decide to view the candidate executing the attack more negatively than the candidate they are attacking.  

NEWS MEDIA BACKLASH – The second form of backlash against false attacks comes from the media covering the election.  Since Watergate, the news media has evolved from basic reporting on elections to campaign watchdog.  Many news outlets have a fact check feature, where they monitor campaign TV ads and make and report on their belief of the legitimacy of the attack.  In most instances, the media will run this segment on TV or in the newspaper and review the claims and determine if any truth is stretched and make any clarification.  However, in instances where an outright lie is purported, the news media will run a story about the ad and question the candidate or campaign who made the false allegation.  This type of reporting will make the campaign that conducted the attack lose credibility and damage them in the media.  If these stories gain traction and get picked up by multiple outlets, the damage to the accusatory campaign will be compounded.

BROADCAST STATION BACKLASH – Broadcast and cable TV stations have become much more adept at reviewing political advertisements before they place them in in logs for airing.  Larger stations have their attorneys check many of these ads, while others leave this work to station managers or traffic directors, who have become much more aware of what to look for in an ad that may raise questions.  Often, stations will require back-up for any claims made and will request any other information that may support such claims if they feel the ad appears to cross any lines.  Stations reserve the right to not air any advertisement that appears untrue or is proven false.  However, once an ad is up, it is very difficult to have it pulled down.  Once stations make a decision to air an ad, they tend to standby that decision.  often candidates that believe they are being falsely attacked try to have an ad pulled and learn the hard way that this isn’t an easy process (and by the time they do get an ad pulled it already has 500 grps behind it).  but if an ad does get pulled, this can become embarrassing and damaging to the accusatory campaign.

LEGAL BACKLASH – This is the hardest to prove and truly make anything of.  Every so often, candidates will make claim that they will sue an opponent for defamation of character or libel.  Rarely do these cases make it to court, but if a candidate does choose to pursue this route it could put the accuser and any others named in the suit in an uncomfortable legal position.  

Ultimately, false attacks can backfire on candidates, and depending on the type of false claim, they can lose a lot by taking such a risk.

A perfect example of this was Felix Grucci’s campaign for re-election in 2002.   Grucci, a first term member, was considered a shoe-in for re-election in New York’s First District on Long Island.   Running against little-known, and not well funded Southampton College, provost Tim Bishop, Grucci’s campaign launched an attack ad claiming that his opponent had ignored sexual assault charges at the school. As it turned out, the claims were based on inaccurate and discredited information from the college’s student newspaper. The attack backfired and Bishop was narrowly elected, one of just a handful of Democratic bright take downs in a big election cycle for Republicans.

CAMPAIGN REGULATIONS – Governing bodies do regulate political advertising, but not in terms of actual claims made.   Candidates and campaign committees must abide by federal election law, which falls under the authority of the FEC, aka Federal Election Commission.   Other groups fall under the authority of the IRS depending on their tax status.  But these organizations only dictate, timing of spots in an election cycle, how they can be paid for, and what specs the disclaimers must abide by.  

But there is an important point made by my friend’s inquiry.  If there continues to be an increasing amount of false campaigning, we can expect that there will be action taken.  Almost any industry that fails to regulate itself, will expose itself to forced regulation by the federal government, even campaign politics, which is made up by members of the federal government.