Ad Critic: McConnell Launches Preemptive Strike on Lunsford

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell – who pollster.com’s trend estimate currently pegs as more vulnerable than Susan Collins, Norm Coleman and Mary Landrieu – launched a relatively early negative spot this week against his opponent Bruce Lunsford.  McConnell seems to have learned the lesson of Hillary Clinton’s recent defeat and is looking to sink his opponent before he has a chance to surge.

McConnell is making the savvy, ruthless play here.  Most people would be amazed to hear this, but politicians usually hate running negatives and resist doing it until they feel threatened.  That’s bad strategy.  Negatives are much more effective early against a challenger who hasn’t been defined yet.  It’s much harder to make negative information stick to a guy voters already have an image of.

By hitting Lunsford early, McConnell is also knocking him off message, disrupting his image building campaign and dragging him down into the “just another politician” mud.  For an incumbent who has had a very hard time cracking the 50%, threshold that’s crucial. 

I’ve been critical of McConnell’s incumbency-oriented media strategy, which Lunsford’s early advertising has made clear he plans to exploit, but McConnell’s decision to go negative early will make it harder for Lunsford to take off.  He still needs to offer a more compelling rational for his own reelection, but McConnell has bought himself some time.

“Lunsford Gas Tax”:  McConnell’s first negative is a solidly done, standard-issue hit piece.  It pounds hard on a key issue, sticks to one simple message and aims to sandbag Lunsford’s outsider message by portraying him as a quasi-lobbyist.  The visuals are dominated by gas pumps and soaring prices, it’s easy to take a cheap shot and knock this style as visually “uncreative,” but it’s very on message and at the end of the day effective.  The shooting style is also deliberately un-stylized, which ads credibility in a state like Kentucky where voters are suspicious of glossiness.

Real Voter Takeaway:  Bruce Lunsford doesn’t care that gas prices are stretching my family’s budget to the breaking point.