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December 30, 2004

TV!

Via Kausfiles, a good WaPo article about the differences between the Kerry campaign and the Bush campaign. Rather than focusing on the $5 million that Bob Shrum made (out of hundreds of millions spent), it would make more sense to focus on the actual differences in how money is spent. As the article notes, advertising (including television advertising) made a big difference in Bush's win. Other things did as well, but lets focus on television advertising, which is currently under attack in favor of more "grassroots" investment.

Here in Georgia, the Supreme Court race from the summer should show to any skeptic the importance and effectiveness of television advertising.

Sears won 146 out of 159 counties. Of the 13 counties that Grant Brantley won, 9 of them are in media markets that are not native to Georgia. In NW Georgia, Brantley won Walker, Whitfield, Murray and Fannin counties. Those counties are part of the Chattanooga market and for budgetary reasons the Sears campaign could not afford to advertise in out of state markets because many of the people that view your ad can't vote in your race. Seminole and Decatur in SW Georgia similarly are in out of state markets, as are Brantley, Pierce and Charlton counties in SE Georgia.

Anyway, on June 19th the AJC wrote a story about Brantley retracting a claim in his bio that he had been nominated for a federal judgeship. This had the potential to be a killer story with one problem -- not many people read the Saturday edition of the AJC and not many voters were paying attention to the judicial races that summer.

The Democratic Party declined comment on the June 19th story in the AJC although we already knew that Brantley had fudged this part of his resume and I actually had already taken footage, at the Lumpkin County GOP barbeque, of Brantley bragging about this untruth.

It was correctly assumed that Brantley's official story to the press would be that this was a small oversight in his bio and not a big deal resume embellishment ala Georgia Tech football coach George O'Leary. The truth was that Brantley's own self-image was that of the "would have been" federal judge if only George HW Bush had been re-elected, when in reality Bush had already decided to pass on Brantley as a nominee before he lost to Bill Clinton in 1992.

Shortly after the AJC story ran, and about two weeks before the summer judicial election, the Sears campaign began running a devastating advertisment that compared the two candidates for Supreme Court. It had a short positive bio on Leah Sears and then a brutal negative barrage against Brantley that started with footage of Brantley himself telling voters that he was "nominated by Bush 41 to be on the federal bench" that was quickly contradicted by the AJC story and then followed up by some other negative news stories from years past about unpaid taxes and his tenure as a Cobb County judge.

The point of my discussion is that television advertising can be a very effective method for disseminating a story line if you do it correctly. Certain grassroots activities are also highly effective ways of winning elections, but rarely on their own and in a large race for Congress or statewide office, advertising, including television advertising, has to be utilized to get across why you are a better choice than your opponent.

Here's some more proof of the power of television. It's a map of Georgia election results in 1996. Max Cleland did better than Bill Clinton in the red counties, and Clinton outperformed Cleland in the blue counties. Some of the blue/red split is random. But you will notice a solid block of counties where Clinton did better than Cleland in the Chattanooga media market. Remember that Georgia was uncontested by Clinton but because of Gore, Tennessee was. Voters who saw Clinton's communication and didn't see Cleland's were far more likely to vote for Clinton than Cleland.

Posted by Chris at December 30, 2004 04:07 PM

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