THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 24, 1994 TAG: 9409240211
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: STAFF REPORT
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
Negative advertising is a tricky business, governed by a set of evolving rules. These are some of the popular ones:
If possible, let your opponent go negative first - or at least promote that public impression.
In the 1989 race for governor, for instance, Democratic media consultant Frank Greer was poised to launch a negative ad campaign against Republican J. Marshall Coleman as soon as Coleman fired the first shot.
In mid-September, Coleman began airing a commercial accusing Democrat L. Douglas Wilder of being soft on crime. ``This is what we've been waiting for,'' said Greer privately. Within 48 hours, Wilder was airing an ad accusing Coleman of launching ``another vicious, negative ad campaign of distortion and false attacks.''
There's a price to pay for negative advertising. A nasty ad may cut into your opponent's support, but it also cuts into yours.
``There's a boomerang, like a bomb drops and then there's fallout,'' says Maryland political consultant Robert Goodman, who handled Coleman's media in 1989. ``The bomb gets you 10 points, the fallout loses you six, so you wind up with four.''
The trick is to make sure that you don't lose more than you gain. That's why some negative ads are quickly yanked from the air if they generate too heated a response.
You've got to establish your own credibility before you go negative.
Some analysts say former Attorney General Mary Sue Terry erred last year when she ran negative ads about Republican George Allen before first waging a strong positive campaign about her own ideas and history.
Again, the danger is that the public will be more turned off by your willingness to attack than by what you're saying about your foe.
Campaigns aren't won on the defensive.
The rule of thumb is that a candidate goes negative when she's behind, runs a mix of positive and negative ads if she's running even, and stays positive if she's ahead.
But Democratic consultant Paul Goldman says such rules are made to be broken. Even when you're ahead, he said, ``sometimes a good counterpunch is the best thing you can do.''
Campaigns should end on a positive note.
The old rule of thumb was that you sandwiched negative advertising between upbeat spots at the beginning and end of a campaign.
But that rule is looking a bit dated, said Goodman. ``Now, once they go on a negative track, they stay negative to the end.''
His philosophy, said Goldman, ``is that you end on your best argument, and if that's a weakness in your opponent, you end the campaign on that.''
In 1989, Goldman said he argued to end the Wilder campaign with a reminder of Coleman's anti-abortion stance but was overruled. ``I wanted to kick 'em with whatever we had. The decision was no, and we almost lost it.''
KEYWORDS: U.S. SENATE RACE CANDIDATE CAMPAIGN ADVERTISING by CNB