Kerry tries to move right. Rove was soooo smart to define him early as an eastern liberal.
Kerry Plans Effort to Show He Is a Centrist
By JODI WILGOREN - NYT
Wilgoren's stuff is genuinely odd. I find it helps to read comparable pieces in the Washington Post. Perhaps there is a truth somewhere between them.
washingtonpost.com
Kerry Hopes to Cement Image With New Ads
As Bush Reduces Airtime, Rival Seeks to Broaden Appeal and Spread Message
By Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 16, 2004; Page A01
washingtonpost.com
Sen. John F. Kerry will begin using new images to introduce himself to voters with an intensified ad blitz in the next two weeks just as President Bush scales back his media offensive, campaign advisers said yesterday.
Kerry (D-Mass.) sees the coming weeks as the unofficial beginning to his general election campaign. He is rushing to fill the vacuum that will be created when Bush cuts his ad spending in 18 battleground states by an average of one-third beginning today, while switching all his ads to an attack on Kerry.
With internal polls and focus groups showing that voters know little about his candidacy, Kerry plans a new ad campaign based on findings that voters are receptive to his military résumé and "New Democrat" message of fiscal restraint and national security might.
"A lot of people don't really know who I am," Kerry told party donors yesterday at a breakfast fundraiser in New York. "Their goal is to define me and make me unacceptable. . . . Our goal has to be to keep that acceptability."
Republican officials said they have calculated that the situation in Iraq will continue to overshadow campaign messages for at least several weeks and perhaps months. Bush strategists are using the time to reevaluate their tactics after record ad spending of $45 million over six weeks.
"The only people who are paying attention have already made up their minds," said a campaign adviser who refused to be identified so he would continue to be briefed by the campaign. "Why be out there in the middle of a war trying to talk about the gas tax? There's no way to break through Iraq right now."
Officials in both parties said that Kerry's unfavorable ratings have been driven up by the Bush attacks, which accuse the Democrat of flip-flopping on issues and favoring higher taxes, but the race remains dead even. Although Bush officials insist they never planned an $8 million-a-week ad schedule indefinitely, Democrats said they sense weakness in a campaign financial machine that they once feared.
"In this business, when what you're doing is working, you don't take your foot off the gas," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), who was political director for former president Bill Clinton.
In some ways, the candidates are switching roles. Bush, who spent months raising a record $180 million and flooded the airwaves while Kerry gained his footing as the presumptive Democratic nominee, is suddenly hoarding cash. At the same time, Kerry, who raised more than $10 million in two nights earlier this week, is setting party records almost nightly and planning to ramp up his advertising significantly.
Kerry's unexpectedly strong fundraising is altering the campaign's ad strategy. Top advisers predicted the candidate would raise about $80 million between Jan. 1 and the July convention, but now they project Kerry will easily top $100 million and perhaps near $120 million. Kerry raised $38 million in March and is on pace for a similarly strong April.
Bush had a budget of $170 million to carry him through the Republican convention at the end of August, but will report soon that he has raised more than $180 million and is continuing phone, mail and Web appeals. The campaign sent a fundraising e-mail yesterday showing Kerry with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), with the subject line: "On Tax Day, another reason to support President Bush."
After a pause of just two weeks after completing fundraisers for his campaign, Bush is going back into the money-raising business with an appearance Tuesday in New York at a $25,000-a-person reception for the Republican National Committee's "Victory 2004" program, which will help turn out voters for the Republican ticket. Officials will raise money for the fund from the Arlington office park where the Bush-Cheney campaign has its headquarters.
Federal filings compiled by the Web site PoliticalMoneyLine show that in addition to ad purchases, Bush has spent $18 million on printing, lists and mailing; $1.6 million on catering and other event costs; and $1 million on travel. The campaign has written checks for $5.2 million to Maverick Media of Austin, the firm founded by Bush media consultant Mark McKinnon.
Harold Ickes, a Clinton fundraising strategist who runs a group called the Media Fund that is buying anti-Bush ads in swing states, said he believes Bush and the Republican National Committee will wind up raising $250 million each. He said his media buyers estimate Bush has spent $53 million to $55 million on ads for broadcast and cable television and radio.
"They thought they were going to be able to lock this election up quick and have run into a real bump," Ickes said.
Matthew Dowd, Bush's chief strategist, told reporters on a conference call yesterday that the advertising had helped bring Bush even with Kerry, up from an average of five or six points down in polls on March 4, when the Bush barrage began. He said that the campaign calculated that voters would be paying a lot of attention to the race after the Democratic primaries, but that the campaign always planned to ratchet back its ad traffic.
"We had always said there was going to be ebbs and flows to this effort, and there would be windows of opportunity when the public was paying a lot of attention and then smaller amounts of attention and then little attention," Dowd said.
Although the Bush campaign is calculating that public interest in the campaign may be waning, the Kerry campaign believes voters are hungry to learn about the senator's views and biography. With fewer Bush ads to compete with, Kerry is also calculating that his ads might resonate more.
His pollsters, Mark Mellman and Tom Kiley, recently completed extensive polling and focus groups to determine the best message for Kerry to take into the November election. Based on the results, Kerry's political team is finalizing a message and political map that will guide the candidate through the early months of the campaign and into the July convention, advisers said.
The most consistent finding: Voters know little about Kerry and his vision for the country, two advisers familiar with the results said. Kerry's first two policy proposals -- a deficit-reduction plan and tax breaks for corporations -- were timed and tailored to position Kerry as the heir apparent to Clinton's middle-of-the-road fiscal legacy.
His advisers said they were heartened by findings that only a small number considered Kerry a flip-flopper and a liberal -- the very labels Bush has spent millions trying to stick on him. One adviser said participants in focus groups appeared more turned off by negative ads than during previous elections, which contributed to the campaign's decision to run more positive ads in the weeks to come.
The Bush campaign, however, is going exclusively negative on television beginning today, with an ad that calls Kerry "wrong on defense" and mocks his quote about a series of votes in October for spending on Iraq and Afghanistan: "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."
Kerry said his new ad campaign will begin in days, but two aides said a new biographical TV ad with a heavy emphasis on the candidate's military record is not finished and is unlikely to be launched in the next week.
The senator will spend millions of dollars portraying himself as fair-minded, fiscal conservative, strong on defense and veterans issues. A top aide said the ad blitz will cost significantly more than the $2 million per week Kerry has been spending.
A chief aim of the upcoming ad campaign is to convince voters that Kerry is capable of managing world affairs and the war on terrorism as well as, or better than, Bush.
Much as he did during the primary race, Kerry will continue to play up his war-hero image and campaign with fellow veterans of the Vietnam War.
"This isn't going to be any mealy-mouthed . . . you know, namby-pamby campaign," Kerry said.
Staff writer Dan Balz in New York contributed to this report. |
