The TV ad war so far has been a skirmish. The Republican U.S. Senate candidates who can afford to go on the air long enough to accumulate ratings points are making mostly ho-hum commercials.
The result is stagnant polls. Our own InsiderAdvantage survey on Thursday showed modest gains for Karen Handel, with the other leading contenders treading water.
The same poll shows a disappointing lack of interest among prospective voters in the GOP primary May 20. It’s hard to pick up support if people aren’t planning to vote.
The mostly ‘vanilla’ ads we’ve seen from the five top contenders in the Republican race are probably another reason the race hasn’t yet jelled.
Amusing and ironic as it may be, the problem is that there have been no attack ads. None of the field has yet won a big enough percentage of the state GOP voting base to warrant being attacked by someone else.
What if, say, Karen Handel decided to use her money to bring down Jack Kingston? Even if the ads worked, Kingston might stumble, but who’s to say that Phil Gingrey might not surge past Kingston instead of Handel? Attack ads right now would be just shooting in the dark.
All the candidates can do is try to define themselves and hope that they can eek into the almost certain runoff. That’s when the attack ads begin in earnest.
To date, everybody knows the cleverest ads are the David Perdue ones that depict his Republican opponents as crying babies. Pretty much of itself, the TV spot has vaulted him into a modest lead in the polls. Since the big splash of the first baby ads, Perdue’s handlers have steered him into the mode of the business man who will apply business principles to the nonsense going on in Washington. But he opens his latest ad with an unexplained shot of the herd of babies on the Capitol lawn. It’s like a subliminal technique: ‘Hey, it’s that crying-babies guy!’
This is a theme of genius because it allows Perdue to attack all his major opponents in one ad, and yet to be funny in doing so. It’s that simple.
Jack Kingston’s first run of ads made one wonder if his campaign team was too stodgy in their thinking. The next commercial makes one wonder if the stodgy one is the candidate himself. (Which isn’t to say he wouldn’t make a good senator.) Can the guy next door win? (See his newest ad on this website, ‘Kingston touts business acumen, conservative record in new ad.’)
Paul Broun’s ads are good because they project him as at least reasonable, and maybe wise on a good day. Self-definition is more important for Broun because so many, including Republicans, routinely characterize him as a salivating wing-nut.
Karen Handel’s first big TV spot was taped live on the stump, as Sarah Palin endorsed her. The ad comes across as a little forced, mostly because Palin is not a seasoned improviser. But enough voters were impressed to bring Handel up in the polls, to within apparent range of making a runoff.
Phil Gingrey appears to be holding his powder for TV time slots closer to the May 20 election. To his credit, one ad that he already has produced takes a clever, if predictable course. He’s the concerned physician in his white lab coat, vowing to repeal Obamacare or not seek reelection to the Senate. Given his biography and the political climate, this is a logical theme for him. But he must escalate his message somehow.
Again, the takeaway from all this is that TV ads will be the biggest single factor in deciding which two candidates emerge in the primary. That’s why we keep emphasizing it.
Without knowing which of their opponents to go after, the leading GOP candidates don’t know how to formulate their message. Whoever’s campaign can come up with the cleverest 30-second message over the next month – and have enough money to air it sufficiently – may be our next U.S. senator.
