Ads May Hurt Kilgore More Than They Help
Poll Finds Backlash to Death Penalty Spots
By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 30, 2005; Page A11
....What (Scott Howell, one of the country's most successful GOP strategists) produced was one of the most arresting images in recent campaign television: a widow, seated in a darkened studio, on the verge of tears and tremulously talking about the man on death row who murdered her police officer husband.
"How could you not think the death penalty was appropriate? That's not justice," she says. "When Tim Kaine calls the death penalty murder, I find it offensive, and I don't trust Tim Kaine to uphold that law."...
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The ad -- and a subsequent spot that showed a grieving father who criticized Kaine for voluntarily representing death row inmates in their appeals and who said Kaine believed even Adolf Hitler was not a candidate for execution -- electrified a race that until then had seemed to many voters one without compelling characters or transcendent issues. But it also demonstrates the unpredictability of emotional appeals to voters.
A Washington Post poll conducted last week found that two of three Virginia voters said the ads were "unfair," including nearly 75 percent of the self-described independents that both campaigns covet. Even 60 percent of those who favor the death penalty said the ads crossed the line. Those who had an unfavorable opinion of Kilgore jumped 10 points, and those who believed he "would say anything to get elected" increased 16 points, to 55 percent.
"It sounds like voters have really rebelled against this ad and are punishing the messenger," said Darrell West, a political science professor at Brown University who has written extensively on the subject of political advertising....
(NOTE: Howell produced the attack ads on Max Cleland in the 2002 Georgia Senatorial campaign.)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/29/AR2005102901378.html