Let the Games Begin: Senate race sparks TV ad war

The campaign advertising battle is officially underway in Minnesota?s hotly contested US Senate race. Democrat Amy Klobuchar struck first, and then Republican Mark Kennedy fired back with a slick, off-beat spot. Now Klobuchar and Kennedy have both launched second ads.

While Kennedy trails Klobuchar in the polls, most pundits expect the race to tighten by November. And they predict an influx of outside money dedicated largely to TV ad campaigns. That could cause the race to turn nasty before it?s over, but for now the tone of the ads is mostly positive.

Kennedy?s first commercial was produced by Texas Republican media guru Scott Howell, the same person who created Norm Coleman?s ad campaign in his 2002 Senate run. According to Kennedy campaign staffers the 60-second spot was shot in Kennedy?s boyhood home in Pequot Lakes.

It?s a humorous take on Kennedy?s upbringing and philosophy, featuring quick snippets with the Congressman?s parents, wife, siblings and children interspersed with shots of candidate mugging with props.

?Mark was always close to his brothers,? declares Kennedy?s mother.

?They slept four to a room,? adds his dad.

The ad then cuts to a shot of Kennedy sitting on top of a bunk bed, with three of his brothers lined up on the floor below him.

?We were close,? quips the first.

?Real close,? chimes in a second.

?Some times a little too close,? adds the third as Kennedy is seen pointing at the middle brother.

Political analyst Steve Smith tells KARE-TV we?re witnessing the first phase in a classic campaign process.

?It's a three-step game,? he explained, ?Personality. Issues. Attack.?

Smith, a political science professor at Washington University in St Louis, says most candidates, particularly those who don?t have statewide recognition, begin with the personality ads.

?You want people to like you; you want to increase your likeability. Then you turn to policy positions, and if you're ahead in the game you stick with them. If you're behind in the game, then you turn negative.?

Smith believes the Kennedy camp is attempting to fight off the perception, and a standard Democrat criticism, that he's too closely aligned with President Bush and the Republican Party?s national agenda. The ad, in Smith?s mind, is an effort to address a perceived weakness.

?That he has run his campaigns as a hard-edged conservative, and a supporter of the President,? said Smith, ?Well this isn't the best year to be emphasizing those traits.?

In the spot Kennedy?s teenaged children can be heard saying, ?He's principled, independent, just not much of a party guy? ? a clear reference to the Republican Party, although the word Republican is never heard or seen in the ad.

The next thing you see is a grainy mock home video of a birthday party with Kennedy wearing a party hat.

Cut back to his daughter, ?I meant he doesn't do whatever the party says to.?

Kennedy's second ad is devoted entirely to telling voters he does cross party lines at times and votes against the White House stand, saying he opposed the No Child Left Behind education program.

Twin Cities advertising expert John Rash, of the Campbell Mithun agency, says its clear Kennedy is attempting to distance himself from Washington.

?Congressman Kennedy, who lives in Washington, wants to emphasize his 5th generation Minnesota roots,? Rash told KARE-TV, ?And the only time Washington was mentioned was when it was specifically said that he?s not a party person, meaning not a political party person.?

Rash, who also teaches mass media and politics at the University of Minnesota, says the ads folksy humor is meant to soften Kennedy's image.

?He?s coming across as a regular guy, as someone who can laugh at himself. It?s counter-intuitive to how most people perceive politicians. And so it's a smart, savvy strategy.?

Rash also gives high marks to Democrat Amy Klobuchar's newest ad, telling the story of her daughter Abigail?s premature birth.

The spot shows photos of baby Abigail in a special incubation crib in a hospital neonatal unit.

Klobuchar tells the TV audience, ?She couldn't swallow, she was hooked up to machines, and yet our HMO had a rule that new mothers were kicked out in 24 hours.?

She continues, ?We got one of the first laws in the country passed guaranteeing new moms and their babies a 48-hour hospital stay.?

Rash says the spot cleverly accomplishes two things at once, both connecting Klobuchar with mothers and then telling what she did about it, lobbying for a change in the law.

?To show not just the human and family side of her, but to show a public policy position that she successfully fought for.?

By the time the spot ends you can see Abigail as she now appears, a smiling pre-teen girl posing with both parents.

While the newest spot introduces Klobuchar?s family, her first ad touted her record as Hennepin County Attorney. In it she talks of sending a judge to prison for stealing trust fund money from a mentally challenged client.

?He was a Democrat, and so am I. But that didn?t matter because this guy had to go to jail.?

Steve Smith asserts that ad served to introduce Klobuchar to a statewide audience, and was also aimed at fighting the notion that female politicians care only about women?s issues.

?For Klobuchar it's probably dealing with that stereotype of a woman in politics. She wants to show that she is a serious policy maker, serious prosecutor.?

?And her ads already show that she wants to demonstrate that she?s been a hard-nosed prosecutor, a serious policy maker on issues that have nothing to do with what we traditionally call women?s issues.?

These are only the opening volleys in what promises to be the most expensive TV ad war in Minnesota history; with at least $40 million being spent on this Senate race, and much of devoted to selling these candidates to us 30-seconds at a time.

By John Croman, KARE 11 News.

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