<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2963" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT size=4><STRONG><FONT size=5>The Year Of Playing
Dirtier<BR></FONT></STRONG><FONT size=3>Negative Ads Get Positively
Surreal<BR></FONT>
<P><FONT size=-1>By Michael Grunwald<BR>Washington Post Staff Writer<BR>Friday,
October 27, 2006; A01<BR></FONT></P>
<P></P>
<P><A href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/k000188/"
target="">Rep. Ron Kind</A> pays for sex!</P>
<P>Well, that's what the Republican challenger for his Wisconsin congressional
seat, Paul R. Nelson, claims in new ads, the ones with "XXX" stamped across
Kind's face.</P>
<P>It turns out that Kind -- along with more than 200 of his fellow hedonists in
the House -- opposed an unsuccessful effort to stop the National Institutes of
Health from pursuing peer-reviewed sex studies. According to Nelson's ads, the
Democrat also wants to "let illegal aliens burn the American flag" and "allow
convicted child molesters to enter this country."</P>
<P>To Nelson, that doesn't even qualify as negative campaigning.</P>
<P>"Negative campaigning is vicious personal attacks," he said in an interview.
"This isn't personal at all."</P>
<P>By 2006 standards, maybe it isn't.</P>
<P>On the brink of what could be a power-shifting election, it is kitchen-sink
time: Desperate candidates are throwing everything. While negative campaigning
is a tradition in American politics, this year's version in many races has an
eccentric shade, filled with allegations of moral bankruptcy and sexual
perversion.</P>
<P>At the same time, the growth of "independent expenditures" by national
parties and other groups has allowed candidates to distance themselves from
distasteful attacks on their opponents, while blogs and YouTube have provided
free distribution networks for eye-catching hatchet jobs.</P>
<P>"When the news is bad, the ads tend to be negative," said Shanto Iyengar, a
Stanford professor who studies political advertising. "And the more negative the
ad, the more likely it is to get free media coverage. So there's a big incentive
to go to the extremes."</P>
<P>The result has been a carnival of ugly, especially on the GOP side, where
operatives are trying to counter what polls show is a hostile political
environment by casting opponents as fatally flawed characters. The National
Republican Campaign Committee is spending more than 90 percent of its
advertising budget on negative ads, according to GOP operatives, and the rest of
the party seems to be following suit. A few examples of the "character issues"
taking center stage two weeks before Election Day:</P>
<P></P>
<P>· In New York, the NRCC ran an ad accusing Democratic House candidate Michael
A. Arcuri, a district attorney, of using taxpayer dollars for phone sex. "Hi,
sexy," a dancing woman purrs. "You've reached the live, one-on-one fantasy
line." It turns out that one of Arcuri's aides had tried to call the state
Division of Criminal Justice, which had a number that was almost identical to
that of a porn line. The misdial cost taxpayers $1.25.</P>
<P></P>
<P>· In Ohio, GOP gubernatorial candidate J. Kenneth Blackwell, trailing by more
than 20 points in polls, has accused front-running Democratic <A
href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/s001004/"
target="">Rep. Ted Strickland</A> of protecting a former aide who was convicted
in 1994 on a misdemeanor indecency charge. Blackwell's campaign is also warning
voters through suggestive "push polls" that Strickland failed to support a
resolution condemning sex between adults and children. Strickland, a
psychiatrist, objected to a line suggesting that sexually abused children cannot
have healthy relationships when they grow up.</P>
<P></P>
<P>· The Republican Party of Wisconsin distributed a mailing linking Democratic
House candidate Steve Kagen to a convicted serial killer and child rapist. The
supposed connection: The "bloodthirsty" attorney for the killer had also done
legal work for Kagen.</P>
<P></P>
<P>· In two dozen congressional districts, a political action committee
supported by a white Indianapolis businessman, J. Patrick Rooney, is running ads
saying Democrats want to abort black babies. A voice says, "If you make a little
mistake with one of your hos, you'll want to dispose of that problem tout de
suite, no questions asked."</P>
<P></P>
<P>· In the most controversial recent ad, the Republican National Committee
slammed Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.) for attending a Playboy-sponsored
Super Bowl party. In the ad, a scantily clad white actress winks as she
reminisces about good times with Ford, who is black. That ad has been pulled,
but the RNC has a new one saying Ford "wants to give the abortion pill to
schoolchildren."</P>
<P>Some Democrats are playing rough, too. House candidate Chris Carney is
running ads slamming the "family values" of <A
href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/s001146/"
target="">Rep. Don Sherwood</A> (R-Pa.), whose former mistress accused him of
choking her. And House candidate Kirsten Gillibrand has an ad online ridiculing
<A href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/s001149/"
target="">Rep. John E. Sweeney</A> (R-N.Y.) for attending a late-night
fraternity party. "What's a 50-year-old man doing at a frat party anyway?" one
young woman asks, as a faux Sweeney boogies behind her to the Beastie Boys.
"Totally creeping me out!" another responds.</P>
<P>But most harsh Democratic attacks have focused on the policies and
performance of the GOP majority, trying to link Republicans to Bush, the
unpopular war in Iraq and the scandals involving former representative <A
href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/f000238/"
target="">Mark Foley</A> and former lobbyist Jack Abramoff. That is not
surprising, given that polls show two-thirds of the electorate thinks the
country is going in the wrong direction. And studies show that negative ads can
reduce turnout; Democrats hope a constant drumbeat of scandal, Iraq and "stay
the course" will persuade conservatives to stay home on Nov. 7.</P>
<P>It is harder for Republicans to blame out-of-power Democrats for the current
state of Washington, but they are equally eager to depress Democratic turnout
and fire up their conservative base. One GOP strategy has been raising the
specter of House Minority Leader <A
href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/p000197/"
target="">Nancy Pelosi</A>, a San Francisco liberal, becoming speaker; for
example, <A href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/h000807/"
target="">Rep. John N. Hostettler</A> (R-Ind.) is airing radio ads warning that
a Democratic victory would allow Pelosi to "put in motion her radical plan to
advance the homosexual agenda." Then again, Hostettler's opponent, Democrat Brad
Ellsworth, has accused him of promoting the sale of guns to criminals,
"including child-rapists."</P>
<P>Some of this year's negative ads are more substantive, reprising a successful
Republican strategy from 2002 and 2004: portraying Democrats as soft on
terrorism. For example, <A
href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/j000163/"
target="">Rep. Nancy L. Johnson</A> (R-Conn.) has an ad lambasting her opponent
for opposing Bush's efforts to conduct wiretaps without search warrants. A host
of Democrats have been accused of trying to "cut and run" in Iraq -- including
House candidate Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, who lost both legs in Iraq.</P>
<P>The RNC has raised eyebrows with an ad consisting almost entirely of al-Qaeda
videos starring Osama bin Laden and his top deputies. There is no sound except
the ticking of a bomb before the final warning: "These are the stakes. Vote
November 7th." John G. Geer, a Vanderbilt professor who has written a book
defending negative political ads, said he told a well-connected Republican
friend in Washington that the ticking-bomb ploy seemed like a desperation move.
The friend e-mailed back: "John, we're desperate!"</P>
<P>"Look, the electorate is polarized, the stakes are large, and neither party
has much to run on right now," Geer said. "You can expect to see some pretty
outlandish ads."</P>
<P>The "pays for sex" ad against Kind in Wisconsin -- along with a similar one
aired against <A
href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/m001154/"
target="">Rep. Brad Miller</A> (D-N.C.) -- may be the most extreme. It says Kind
spent tax dollars to study "the sex lives of Vietnamese prostitutes" and "the
masturbation habits of old men" and "to pay teenage girls to watch pornographic
movies with probes connected to their genitalia." Cue the punch line: "Ron Kind
pays for sex, but not for soldiers." The Wisconsin Republican Party denounced
the ad, and several TV stations refused to air it, but that only got it more
attention. It is the centerpiece of Nelson's Web site: "This ad is so powerful,
a sitting U.S. Congressman threatened TV stations with legal action if they
dared to play it."</P>
<P>Kind joked in an interview that he has been paying for sex ever since he said
"I do." But on a more serious note, he said Nelson's attack ad is typical of
modern politics, in which desperate candidates can attract media coverage and
rally their base with distortion. He opposed the amendment in question -- as did
many Republicans -- because he does not think Congress should interfere in
peer-reviewed NIH studies, not because of any interest in teenage genitalia.
That particular study, incidentally, had nothing to do with teenagers.</P>
<P>"Man, it's a crazy system, and it's getting worse every year," Kind said. "We
rip each other to shreds, and then we're all supposed to come back to Washington
and try to work together. It's a hell of a way to elect representatives."</P>
<P>At least it is clear who is responsible for Nelson's ad: Nelson. The Playboy
ad bashing Ford, on the other hand, is a typical product of the attack politics
of 2006. Its beneficiary, GOP Senate candidate Bob Corker, called it "tacky" but
said he cannot do anything about an RNC ad. Even RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman said
he is powerless to stop it; it is an "independent expenditure" of the RNC, out
of the committee's control. He doesn't seem too upset about it, though. Corker
has been rising in the polls since it started airing.</P>
<P>Experts say that in the past, negative ads were usually more accurate, better
documented and more informative than positive ads; there was a higher burden of
proof. Stanford's Iyengar thinks that is still true for candidate-funded
messages, which now require candidates to say they approved them. But it is not
true when the messages are produced by political parties, shadowy independent
groups or partisans posting on YouTube.</P>
<P>"You're going to see more of this sensational, off-the-wall stuff," Iyengar
said. "If you get people disgusted, they might withdraw from politics, and
that's the real goal these days."</P></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>