We’ve hit the home stretch. Time to spend your money and call in your favors, because like George S. Kaufman said, “you can’t take it with you.” With that idea in mind, looking at the ads that the campaigns are putting out shows exactly what message they have zeroed in on in their last ditch efforts to sway voters. Nunn, Perdue, Carter, and Deal will certainly go on and on in the upcoming debates about their platforms and why their opponents should never hold elected office, but for all their hype they will only be viewed by supporters who made up their minds long, long ago. The television spots are where the action is, and it is by looking at them that we can see the state of the races.
Governor’s Race:
Appealing to women has clearly become a point of emphasis for the Deal campaign, likely due to the barrage of recent polls showing him trailing to Jason Carter in that demographic. This Deal ad, (from conservative group Coalition for Georgia’s Future) promoting women-owned businesses does a double-duty on both the female and small business fronts.
The Carter camp wasn’t going to let that message go without response, releasing this ad shortly after Deal’s. It features a predominantly female set of speakers lamenting the struggles facing middle class and rural Georgians while the Governor focuses on ‘big business’. Carter’s campaign director followed the ad up by remarking on twitter that their ad featured real Georgians, while the Deal ad, (which to be fair did not come directly from the campaign) was filled with stock footage.
The real story here is that Carter still hasn’t begun what many thought would be an inevitable ethics bombardment on Deal. Perhaps he’s waiting until the last three weeks when voters really start to pay attention, but his insistence on sticking to the education issue has led to Deal widening his lead in the polls. Some have speculated that Carter is keeping his nose clean for a 2018 run, but taking his foot off the pedal when there is ‘ethics’ colored blood in the water seems like a decision his team is going to regret come November.
Nathan Deal has also gotten his wife, Sandra, into the mix, drawing on her past as an educator as well as her travels around the state visiting all 181 school districts. An appeal to women as well as a reaffirming of his dedication to education? No wonder this ad ran all weekend during the state’s most valuable advertising block – the UGA football game. For a race where education has become a major point of contention, (especially for the Carter team) making sure to focus on it with television spots seems like a smart decision.
Then you’ve got your token Spanish-language ad from ‘People for the American Way’, trying to draw out that elusive Hispanic demographic to vote for the Democratic ticket. As the AJC noted, this strategy may actually do more harm than good as (white) independent voters tend to sway to the right when confronted with Democratic ads focusing on a demographic that is entirely not their own. That being said, I doubt this spot will air on a channel where the primary language is not Spanish.
Over on the U.S. Senate side, Michelle Nunn continues to hammer Perdue on outsourcing jobs and being on the receiving end of class-action lawsuits about unequal pay for women while the CEO of Dollar General. This after a series of ads hitting the Republican for his ill-advised angle implying that Nunn’s Points of Light charity organization supported terrorism. An aggressive campaign continues for Nunn, who has shown a sharper edge than many might have predicted. That same edge was on full display at the first debate between the two candidates in Perry, as she hammered away at a backpedaling Perdue all night. We’ll see if she can maintain that aggression through the election.
Perdue meanwhile has stayed true to his message – painting Nunn as a classic liberal who supports President Obama’s “big government, job killing policies” while portraying himself as a ‘lower taxes, fewer regulations’ dyed in the wool conservative. A tried and tested strategy in a state that voted against Obama twice when his approval ratings where much higher than they are today. Perdue’s lack of creativity hasn’t changed much since the primary, so we’ll see if a cut and paste ‘I’m a Republican’ strategy works in a state that is, well, Republican.
