George Allen's TV advertising campaign begins today and continues through November 7. According to Allen campaign manager Dick Wad(hams), "We are going up [on the air], and we will stay up through the election." That is, assuming Allen's money holds out, which is highly likely. According to the Washington Post:
One of the ads that will air in Northern Virginia appears targeted at the area's highly skilled workforce, which includes many immigrants. The 30-second ad, which will initially air only in Washington, highlights Allen's sponsorship of a bill in Congress to increase the number of engineers and scientists while boosting federal funding for science and technology research. As Allen talks about the bill, shots of children working on computers and in a chemistry lab flash across the screen.A separate ad touting Allen's efforts to crack down on gangs and child sexual predators will be shown statewide. Neither ad mentions Webb.
On the first ad, I presume this will talk about Allen's co-sponsorship of legislation increasing the number of foreign high-tech workers allowed in the United States under so-called H1-B visas. If so, this is a rather controversial topic to spend millions of dollars to boast about. As we saw during the Democratic primary earlier this year, many American high-tech have strongly negative feelings about H1-B visas. But we'll have to see the ads first; maybe Allen's talking about something else he's done to improve U.S. competitiveness in science and technology while "bored" in the "wounded sea slug" of a Senate the past 6 years.
On the second ad, that's great George, but who ISN'T against cracking down on gangs and sexual predators? For example, the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, which "strengthen[s] Federal laws to protect our children from sexual and other violent crimes, prevent child pornography, and make the Internet safer for our sons and daughters," passed the U.S Senate unanimously in July 2006. What did George Allen do in terms of leading on this issue? According to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid:
A number of Senators have been leaders in this legislative effort. In addition to Chairman Specter and Ranking Member Leahy, I appreciate the hard work of Senators Biden, Dorgan, Hatch, Kennedy and others. I thank the Majority Leader for making this bill a priority.
That's right, no mention of George Allen in there. And no mention of George Allen in President Bush's signing statement either. So what DID George Allen do on this bill? Got me. Maybe his ads will make it clear. Most likely, they will simply pretend that George Allen was a leader on a bill that actually was led by others and which was approved unanimously - Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, and everyone else - in the U.S. Senate earlier this summer. Wow, great work Senator Allen!
The bottom line with George Allen's ads is this: Allen can pretend to have accomplished things in the "wounded sea slug" of a Senate, but when you look a bit closer you see that there's no much to see there.
Increased H1-B visas and voting for something that every other Senator (Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, etc.) voted for as well, that's not super impressive. But if George Allen and Dick Wadhams, in their infinite wisdom, want to spend millions of dollars trying to convince us of Allen's (not-so) stunning record of (non-)accomplishment in the Senate, that's fine with me. My guess is that this advertising "blitz" will be about as effective as putting gobs of lipstick on a pig. You can do that, and you can even dress up that pig real pretty and teach it to sing opera. But in the end, you know what? At the end of the day, it will still be a pig. There's a lesson there...
Lowell Feld is Netroots Coordinator for the Jim Webb for US Senate Campaign. The ideas expressed here belong to Lowell Feld alone, and do not necessarily represent those of Jim Webb, his advisors, staff, or supporters.
Well, Jim Webb has about a 70% name recognition. If Webb can decide what the other 30% hear about him, Allen is in a lot of trouble. Who knows, though. Maybe their internals show that Allen's numbers went up after his first ad campaign.
Allen is passing up on attacking Webb in order to better his imagae after such a negative few weeks. The Webb Campaign can't pass up on this opportunity to tell Virginia exactly what kind of candidate Jim Webb really is before Allen goes on a smear rampage in October.
But he's doing this because he doesn't have anything else to run on.
Interesting that the Allen folks are continuing to go against their nature and "stay positive." Wonder how long it'll last. I can't wait for the first Webb ad "introducing" the Secretary Webb to Virginia. They'll have to go negative then.
Webb will go negative and stay negative... with cute little blurbs about himself at the end of most ads to try to convince voters that he's not really negative, and that they should vote for him ONLY because his son is in Iraq.
Can't wait.
In any case, if Allen doesn't address the real issues of Iraq and the economy he is toast..... in fact if he does, he is still toast..... His pitiful energy policy doesn't even begin to address the ANGER most voters are expressing over the obscene profits of Bush’s buddies the oil companies and the cost at the pump, even if they do temporarily drive it down for 60 days artificially (just they way they drove it up artificially).
In the next two weeks as the phone companies start ramping up the final push to try frantically to avoid Net Neutrality spending their Millions of dollars a week of TV advertising through their surrogate Telecom associations and confusingly named PACs, this will all be negative advertising and you know Allen's name will be associated with that by the Dems, Webb can go positive and get broad support from even the far right on this specific issue.... Just saying “It will lower Cable TV rates†(actually a lie) won’t work when they understand their Internet charges for their home will double with special fees.
And when Rove cranks up the October national scare tactics with some trumped up or convenient actual conspiracy, the old story of "Crying Wolf" will kick in this time and given the choice of cowboy boots or combat boots, I see that tactic playing to Webb this time irrelevant that he is a democrat. With his own amazing war record, his stance on the invasion as publicly well documented in advance, he still will be the soldier's soldier and true leader with the magic word “TRUSTâ€.
Other than these slight modifications…. Your predictions are consistent
I'd look for the Allen camp to push the positive ads as far as they can. Since they have tons of cash it's worth the investment if they can get any positive movement in the polls - even if it's small.
Furthermore, they want to distance themselves from the mac*%@a incident - not for the racist aspect but for the "Allen is a mean guy" aspect. If they go negative on the heels of that fiasco he'll only strengthen an image of being a mean, nasty person.
But Allen's approval numbers haven't changed much (in the direction he would like) and his last batch of positive ads didn't have much, if any, effect. So I predict that the positive ad strategy will quickly be replaced by the only option left - all negative all the time.
And as you point out, most negative ads have a short positive attached at the end. So expect that.
As for Webb I predict we'll see a mixed bag.
The time is right for change (due to a massive failure of the current Republican controlled government) and one of the best ways to highlight that is to address why the incumbent has failed. It's hard to talk about your opponent's failures without going negative, so I expect we will certainly see these negative ads from Webb as well.
But Webb also has a lot to offer and, quite frankly, most Virginians don't know it. So, instead of all negative all the time, Webb will likely want to present who he is and what stand for in positive ads.
Oorah!