Negative Advertising in the Senate Race

Negative Advertising in Senate Race
November 5, 2002
by: Melanie Atkins

You sat down in front of the television. You flipped through the channels until a program was chosen. You became immersed into the raging sea of annoying campaign commercials for the Senate Race 2002.

Election Day Tuesday brought an end to the overwhelming amount of negative advertisements that for weeks flooded television sets of audiences across North Carolina and across the nation.

“When I’m watching television I don’t like to be interrupted by useless arguments of personal attack,” said junior Misty Benfield, 20, a biology student at the University, when interviewed Tuesday at Lenoir Dining hall.
Benfield said, “I’m very glad the election is over because now I won’t have to be bothered.” She echoed the thoughts of the others interviewed who were also relieved that Elizabeth Dole and Erskine Bowles’ campaign commercials came to an end.

John Sweeney, an associate professor of sports advertising in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, described himself as a “disgruntled individual that left the teaching of [political advertising]” because of what such advertising had become.

Sweeney, who described the Senate Race candidates as “two very fine people mucking each other up with mud,” became so crazed by campaign advertising tactics that he actually quit teaching the subject.

“Demeaning your opponent with negative advertisements is [now] a standardized technique,” Sweeney said when interviewed in Carroll.

Benfield dealt with the commercials by tuning them out and could recall only that Dole was a woman and Bowles “[wore] glasses five sizes too big.”

Sophomore Chris Ganley, 19, from Greensboro said, “[the candidates] always call each other liars,” and they are “always bombing on the other candidate.” Neither of the students’ views displayed an understanding of campaign issues that should have been obtained from effective advertising.

Sweeney said the advertisements were full of “smearing opponents [and] obscuring issues,” but he found that the commercials were hard to ignore.
According to the Campaign Media Analysis Group of Virginia, more television ads were aired than what was expected, probably as a result of such an expensive senate race in which Bowles raised $10 million; Dole, $12 million.

“They use campaign money to talk bad about each other instead of to enforce their topics,” said Benfield, who was angered that Bowles turned down Dole’s offer to only conduct televised debates.“Bowles was stupid to refuse the idea.”

Sweeney argued that although restricting funds for campaigns was illegal, it would benefit political advertising if done voluntarily. “If you’re going to make an intellectual argument, do it on camera,” he said. Any relevant topics should be discussed or presented live, not by commercials.

Ganley “tried not to pay attention to the fighting between the candidates and tried to focus more on their personal beliefs, rather than their going at each other.”

The fighting is based on false claims that mostly have nothing to do with the candidates’ real issues. Sweeney said that instilling these ideas in the minds of uninformed viewers is deceptive.

Sweeney said that Dole’s televised attack on Bowles’ stance on “Fast Track” was irrelevant because it was a republican issue, and that Bowles’ views did not deserve criticism sine he is the democratic candidate.

The same thing happened in the 1964 classic negative advertisement, “Daisy,” Sweeney said, in which Lyndon B. Johnson attacked Barry Goldwater’s interest in nuclear bombs.

According to James B. Twitchell’s, Twenty Ads that Shook the World, “Daisy” focused on an issue that was not actually part of Goldwater’s platform.
Negative ads have blossomed over the decades and have become less informative, Sweeney said. They stick in viewers’ minds no matter how hard they try to resist.

“I think that the negative fighting between the candidates really takes away a lot of positive messages that could otherwise be focused on,” said Ganley.
Ganley said that the candidates “should be campaigning for themselves, not against each other.”