Negative ads, positive results

Why do politicians go low? Because it’s effective, experts say

The Florida primary is just days away — which means it’s not safe to let the kids check the mail or watch TV news.

If you do, you risk exposing them to all sorts of, um, stuff that requires explaining.

Such as:

■ What it means that a candidate used the n-word.

■ Why a candidate is responsible for sewage being dumped into Biscayne Bay.

■ Who the smiling man is with a gun over his shoulder and finger on the trigger.

■ Or why — and this is a concern only in Democratic households — a candidate said something positive about President Donald Trump.

Democratic and Republican candidates who want their parties’ nominations for governor in the Aug. 28 primary are carving one another up. The negativity runs all the way down the ballot to contests for the state Legislature and School Board.

Plenty of voters, like Norman Newman of Boynton Beach, don’t like them. “The negative things are a big mistake,” he said. “They should go positive.”

Roni Wiernik of Tamarac called the negative TV ads and campaign mailers “disgusting.”

“Why do they have to fight each

other?” wonders Norma Gilbert, age 88. “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say it.”

Yet the brutally negative ads, designed to shred opposition candidates, keep coming back election after election like stubborn weeds.

Candidates use negative ads because they’re effective, said Judy Stern, a Fort Lauderdale lobbyist and political consultant. “It works.”

And, added Kevin Wagner, a political scientist at Florida Atlantic University, “when done well, they can be very effective.”

Wagner said there are basically two ways to win an election: Candidates can get more people to vote for them, or get fewer people to vote for their opponents. If a negative ad holds down an opponent’s vote totals — even if it doesn’t boost the candidate paying for the ad — it’s done its job.

Ryan Banfill, who has handled communications for multiple Democratic organizations and elected officials, said ads don’t have to be negative to work. As an example, he cited the commercial in which Republican governor candidate Ron DeSantis shows his wife, kids and love for Trump. “It was different, humorous, demonstrated his #Trump #MAGA bonafides, and got attention because of it. Consultants really need to get more creative because attacks are predictable and boring,” he wrote on Twitter.

If the ads seem as if they’re everywhere, it’s because they are.

This year, both parties have well-funded, hotly contested races for governor, something that wasn’t the case four years ago. And there is already heavy advertising in the Bill NelsonRick Scott U.S. Senate race, which won’t be decided until November.

More campaigns, with more money to spend than before, may be producing an increase in the total volume of ads, Wagner said.

“It might seem like it’s worse because it’s so hard to avoid advertising. It happens not just on television, but on the internet and

when you’re driving,” he said.

In big races, TV is the dominant medium. And location makes a difference. In the expensive Miami-Fort Lauderdale television market, viewers don’t see as many broadcast ads as viewers in the cheaper West Palm Beach market.

In more expensive places and in local races, the ads are common on cable TV and in mailers, both of which can be targeted more narrowly.

Negative ads aren’t universally despised.

Selma Arma, a Broward voter, said she wants to get the information that is sometimes revealed in negative ads. “A lot of it is true,” she said.

Rick Kendle of Miami Beach, writing on Twitter, said: “I don’t mind a negative but truthful ad. That is what primaries are about, getting the truth and facts out in the open.”

Some of 2018’s toughest ads are coming from Jeff Greene and Philip Levine, two of the five candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for governor. Both are ultra-wealthy men from South Florida. “When candidates are competing for the same segment of the electorate,” Wagner said, “you tend to see more negative advertising because you have to move viewers away from your opponent.”

One of Levine’s ads has a video clip of Greene praising Trump. Like every candidate who is attacked, Greene said the ad is grossly out of context and misleading.

Still, it’s had an effect. At campaign appearances on Tuesday and Wednesday, in different Broward cities, voters demanded that Greene explain himself. And voter Jackie Leon said she found the ad useful. She said she considered voting for Greene, but the ad convinced her to vote for Levine.

Greene has gone after Levine with a spot featuring a video clip in which Levine praises Trump. Another Greene ad labels Levine “too close to Russians, too much like Trump” for taking $500,000 in campaign money from a Russian oligarch.

Adam Putnam, a candidate for the Republican

nomination for governor, was attacked for support he’s received from Florida’s sugar industry, which many people hold responsible for the blue-green algae crisis afflicting Lake Okeechobee and state waterways.

A Putnam ad accuses his competition, DeSantis, of hypocrisy and betrayal. “Why did he sell Florida out? Because the real Ron DeSantis is part of the Washington swamp,” the ad says.

Most of the ads feature clips from TV news, dramatic music, unflattering blackand-white pictures of the target and ominous warnings. They don’t always come directly from an opposing candidate.

The Collective, a super political action committee that supports Democrat Andrew Gillum for governor, ran an ad accusing competitor Gwen Graham of being insufficiently supportive of former President Barack Obama and voting to hurt the environment. UNITE HERE, a labor union that supports Levine, is running an anti-Graham ad that says a family company’s involvement in the proposed American Dream Miami development would hurt the environment, increase traffic and result in low-wage jobs.

Political party leaders dislike ads that pit Republican against Republican or Democrat against Democrat.

“I really hate them,” said Michael Barnett, chairman of the Palm Beach County Republican Party.

Barbara Effman, president of the West Broward Democratic Club, said “negative advertising in a primary is sinful.”

Effman and Barnett said negative ads in primaries make it more difficult to bring people together once the nominee is chosen and the focus turns to November.

“These divisive ads just give us ammunition for the Democrats to use against us in the general election,” Barnett said. There is, however, one class of negative ads he doesn’t mind. “I like to see ads from Republicans that focus on the shortcomings of Democrats.”