Negative Political Campaigning Analysis

"Negative Political Campaigning"

Going negative is not a step to be taken lightly, although today more campaigns go negative more quickly than ever before. Janice M. King, president of Janice King Communications, when discussing negative advertising in general, said that negative messages about competitors create FUD: fear, uncertainty, and doubt. You must consider seriously the implications of your candidate causing FUD and its resulting stresses on the political system. Campaigns & Elections reported that Cathy Allen, president of Campaign Connection of Seattle, indicated that going negative might be the proper course when taking on an incumbent, when the opponent is outspending the candidate by large margins, when there is irrefutable
The governor's mansion's food budget was always an issue when James Thompson was Illinois' chief executive in the 1970s and 1980s. People understood that what the state was spending on the governor's groceries was far out of whack compared to what they were spending at the supermarket. Set the stage. Start making noises that the opponent is a big spender or a hypocrite before dropping the big bomb. Set that bomb off early. The closer to election day a negative attack is made, the less credibility it has.
Humor can be an effective form of negative campaigning. Although he did not win, Illinois Lieutenant Governor Bob Kustra gained some points in his 1996 U.S. Senate primary against State Senator Al Salvi by depicting Salvi, a personal-injury attorney, in humorous commercials showing a lawyer literally chasing an
admit it before the attack even comes. Jerry Ford was candid about the fact that he had started dating wife Betty before her divorce from her first husband was final, and Jimmy Carter's campaign could not make an issue of it in the 1976 presidential race. Attack the attack, criticizing your opponent for negative campaigning, or you can respond with negative information about the opponent or the attack tactics as well what lawyers call discrediting the witness. This is what the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign did with Gennifer Flowers. If possible, get a blue-ribbon source to refute the attack. Turn the attack into a positive. President Harry Truman's Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, had once been dumped from an economic advisory post by President Franklin Roosevelt. That could have been considered a negative among FDR supporters, but Acheson's disagreement with Roosevelt had been over devaluation of the dollar, which could have been played as a positive to sound-money advocates. It is all in the spin.Deflect it with humor. In 1988, Illinois Cook County Board President George Dunne was tainted by scandal when two women he had sexual relationships with were later hired for county jobs. Supporters defended him by arguing he was a widower and therefore single, stressing the jobs were extremely low-paying and not political plums, and marvelling that a man in his seventies could be involved