When Your Negative Ads Don’t Match the Facts, You Lose
Television advertising has consistently proven to be one of the more effective vehicles for political candidates to communicate messages and ideas directly to the voting public. These can take a variety of forms, but some of the most successful are contrast ads. The purpose of these spots is to highlight portions of an opponent’s political or professional record that voters may find the most distasteful. These attacks can be sharply critical, hard-hitting, and even aggressive; but what they cannot be is false.
For evidence of what happens when a campaign engages in poorly researched, blatantly misleading negative attacks look no further than Donna Edwards’ disastrous campaign against Chris Van Hollen in the recent Democratic primary for Maryland’s open U.S. Senate seat. During the highly contentious fight, a super PAC backing Edwards’ campaign ran an adclaiming Van Hollen had worked with the National Rifle Association to craft a loophole in gun regulation legislation. The Edwards campaign echoed the claim in an ad linking the shooting of a 3-year-old girl to Van Hollen’s “backroom deal” with the NRA.
It turns out the alleged deal was really more likely a miscalculation by legislative staff that had nothing to do with gun control. The bill in question sought to create greater reporting requirements of politically active nonprofit groups. After the measure drew criticism from larger political nonprofits, including the NRA and AFL-CIO, Van Hollen wrote in an exemption for organizations with over 1 million members. It just so happened that the NRA was the only group that met this threshold. Upon realizing this, Van Hollen promptly broadened the exemption to include groups with over 500,000 members. Edwards also suggested she led the charge in opposition to the bill over the supposed NRA carve-out and eventually succeeded in killing the bill. In reality the legislation died when Republicans took control of the House in 2010 and the House declined to take it up.
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Had the super PAC and campaign checked their facts before running the ads, they could have avoided the backlash that followed their release. The Washington Post gave the claims “three Pinocchio’s” (out of a possible four). The White House requested the super PAC’s ad be pulled for using images of President Obama that were “misleading.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid criticized Edwards and the super PAC for “engaging in politics at its very worst.” Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi also criticized the super PAC ad calling for it to be pulled form the airwave. Edwards’ ads were so heavily disputed, Van Hollen even cut his own response ad highlighting the criticism.
Considering Edwards’ staggering loss to Van Hollen and the substantial public criticism her misleading ads garnered, she should become yet another cautionary tale political consultants and campaign professionals tell their candidates when preparing attacks on opponents. It is the thoughtfulness and factual nature of the content that separates a true contrast ad from the kind of misleading negative advertising the public will turn away from and vote against.
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