The really mean stuff is always done at a low level. Remember Bush/McCain in South Carolina.
January 12, 2004 - New York Times
THE TACTICS
For Top Candidates, TV Ads Smile, but Mailings Snarl
By JIM RUTENBERG
DES MOINES, Jan. 11 — The political commercials running on television in these last days before the Iowa caucuses are an exercise in tact. The spots are rife with inspirational scenes of candidates with their adoring supporters. Swipes at opponents, if any, are veiled.
The body blows come in the mail.
"Howard Dean Tried to Deny Supporting Republican Medicare Cuts — But He Got Caught," blares one glossy mailing from Representative Richard A. Gephardt recently sent to voters. On its cover: a clench-jawed Dr. Dean with the tabloid-style headline "CAUGHT."
A mailing from Dr. Dean says Senator John Kerry is "Bad for Iowa Farmers." Mr. Gephardt and Mr. Kerry, another mailing from Dr. Dean asserts, "are running one-state campaigns" and stand no chance against President Bush.
The heavy dose of hard-hitting mailings, primarily from Mr. Gephardt and Dr. Dean, who lead in the polls here, has created a two-tiered media campaign. The one on television adheres to Iowans' oft-stated distaste for negative campaigning. The one in Democratic mailboxes plays to what strategists hope are the base political instincts of the undecided without gaining too much notice from news media referees, who could amplify the negativity.
"Mail pieces are like drive-by shootings," said a senior strategist for one of the campaigns. "Nobody really sees them, they're hard to track and hard to trace."
Hard-charging political pamphlets predate the birth of the nation. And hard-hitting mass mailings have been with American voters for decades.
But longtime residents and political experts here say they do not remember campaign mail ever being so heavy and tough-minded.
"The mail is absolutely off the charts," said Gordon R. Fischer, chairman of the state Democratic Party. "Just like everything else, there's no question there's more mail, by a factor of at least 10, than ever before."
The mail campaign reflects just how tight the first race of the primary season has become. The candidates, already blanketing television with a record number of advertisements, are looking for an edge.
But negative mail risks driving votes away. Several campaign experts and strategists have attributed a surge in popularity for Senator John Edwards, who has vowed to stay positive, to a backlash against the negativity of his competitors.
Several voters called the attack mailings a turnoff. Connie Ode, who runs a small graphic design firm here with her husband and plans to attend a caucus, said: "Lately it's been rather negative, like the one with Howard Dean's evil face on it. I don't appreciate those from any candidate."
Ms. Ode, 61, said she had received up to six mailings on a near-daily basis, a number cited by several other voters interviewed here this weekend, who also face a deluge of recorded calls from the candidates.
Undecided but leaning toward Dr. Dean, she added: "I'm going to pay attention to how they behave in the next nine days. If it's positive, and they want to put forth their issues, then good."
Dr. Dean's mailings have made him particularly vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy because he has spoken of the need to be positive. In a statement on CNN, which Mr. Kerry's campaign included in a news release calling attention to a recent mailed attack, Dr. Dean said: "We are in the last few weeks of a primary campaign, a caucus campaign in Iowa. I would like to go into that campaign with a positive message."
Joe Trippi, Dr. Dean's campaign manager, said much of the campaign's mail had been positive in the form of handwritten letters from supporters, then it reverted to negative mail only because the candidate was under intensive attack. "You just can't unilaterally let everybody beat the living daylights out of you and not answer back," he said.
Mr. Trippi said mail gave the campaign a cost-effective way to reach voters on issues of specific importance to them, whereas television, far more expensive, could not be targeted as narrowly. "In one county, it may be a specific issue in which Kerry's voted the wrong way; in another county it might be Gephardt," he said.
For instance, a new mailing from Dr. Dean that questioned Mr. Kerry's support for farmers went out to rural areas. The Kerry campaign said the mailing distorted a record of staunch support for farmers.
The harsh language, Mr. Trippi said, was "more about trying to grab somebody's attention quickly."
Bill Carrick, Mr. Gephardt's media strategist, acknowledged that the campaign was more willing to unleash attacks via mail than television. Thirty-second attack advertisements, Mr. Carrick said, are more likely to offend voters because they blare directly into living rooms, while voters can throw mail away before opening it. And, he said, voters are more willing to hear a negative attack against a candidate if the charges are well documented. Mail allows the campaign to do just that; commercials do not.
"It could come off as more shrill," he said of a 30-second negative television commercial.
Mr. Gephardt's mailings have at times served as bruising versions of his sunnier television commercials. One advertisement running on stations here shows Mr. Gephardt with a gaggle of hard-hat workers as an announcer boasts, "Only one candidate led the fight against Nafta and the China trade deal." It does not go beyond Mr. Gephardt's own campaign pledges.
A corresponding mailing that repeats the line about Mr. Gephardt's stand on trade also features a picture of an Asian woman at a sewing machine under the headline "Slave Labor and Sweatshops" and asserts that both were "Promoted by Bad Trade Deals Supported by Dean, Kerry and Edwards."
Asked whether such a mailing might drive away some voters, David Plouffe, a senior advisor to Mr. Gephardt, said it would most likely anger the other candidates' die-hard supporters, "and we're not terribly concerned with them right now."
Even if Mr. Plouffe is correct, it is unclear just how much benefit such mailings confer. Voters here have been deluged by television advertisements for months, to the tune of $10 million by one campaign's informed estimate, and some experts said it all might be starting to blur together. (Most of the campaigns were reluctant to say for this article how much they had spent on direct mail in Iowa.)
"You're reaching a stage where, more than last time, they're running a lot of ads and people get worn down by it," said Arthur Sanders, a political science professor at Drake University. Then again, Professor Sanders said, in such a close race the candidates have to try something to break out. And for all of the voter complaints about the negative mail, it could make a difference.
"People might not like the fact that you're attacking Howard Dean," he said. "But it may affect how they think about Howard Dean."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |
