Columnist Jon Ralston: Using cancer as a political ploy

Saturday, Sept. 16, 2000 | 6:23 a.m.

Jon Ralston, who publishes the Ralston Report, writes a column for the Sun on Sundays and Wednesdays. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or by e-mail at ralston@vegas.com

THE AD that changed the state's top-of-the-ticket race, the one that transformed an immortal lock into a dramatic nail-biter, was about breast cancer.

The ploy was both cynical and brilliant. The subject the other side was highlighting was untenable, so using the magnetic issue of breast cancer to pull voters in another direction was critical. Breast cancer would evoke sympathy and support, even though it was irrelevant to the issue at hand. Yes, it was a smokescreen; but with enough smoke, voters might forget what was being obscured.

The commercial began airing almost exactly two years ago and changed then-Las Vegas Mayor Jan Jones from a quixotic anointment-killer to a real threat to gubernatorial anointee Kenny Guinn. In the ad, Jones used her own breast cancer experience to deflect attention from her poor attendance record at public meetings -- even though the Guinn campaign had criticized her for missing meetings before she was diagnosed.

The Jonesites knew the ad was spectacularly disingenuous, but they also knew it just might work. It almost did -- Jones was in a dead heat with Guinn a week or so after the commercial aired and if not for Guinn's superior war chest and phenomenal grass-roots effort, she might be governor today instead of holding an even more important position: gaming executive.

Who would have guessed that Jan Jones and John Ensign would ever have so much in common? As if to continue the striking parallels between the 1998 gubernatorial race and this year's U.S. Senate contest -- and this one with an ironic twist -- breast cancer is now being used by Ensign as a diversion for voters gawking at the train wreck that is his recent rhetorical mangling of the abortion issue.

Team Ensign, which looks strikingly like the anointment crew of Team Guinn, can't help but remember how Jones so outrageously used breast cancer to change the subject. They wailed in 1998 about the tactic. But this year exploiting breast cancer as a political issue, so women will not run screaming from the Ensign camp because he sounds like a pro-life extremist, seems like a peachy idea.

Ensign, whose morphing into a Democrat has been amazingly skillful but has been impeded when he makes the mistake of moving his lips, landed himself in trouble when he seemed to imply to an Associated Press reporter that a federally funded abortion is "something worse" than a rape. Ensign later said he had misspoken, but reiterated his opposition to abortion, a subject he has not wanted to talk about in any of his campaigns because the state's electorate is decidedly pro-choice.

Democrat Ed Bernstein, hoping to exploit the abortion issue but unable to break through, was nothing short of gleeful that his opponent had provided him an entree -- he went up with an ad immediately. Shortly thereafter, polls began surfacing showing Ensign's lead had shrunk close to single digits -- even before the abortion flap was in full flower.

Which brings us -- and brought Team Ensign -- to breast cancer. The question confronting Ensign was the same one that faced Jones two years ago: How can I change the subject and make it work? Answer: Find some women to talk nicely about me and find a subject other than abortion to talk about. So he did.

And he found three pretty effective conduits for his tactic: his wife, Darlene, First Lady Dema Guinn and Breast Cancer Coalition boss Gail Allen. In one of Ensign's new ads, Mrs. Guinn speaks directly into the camera and declares: "We're pro-choice, and John Ensign is the right choice."

If I didn't know better, I'd think Team Ensign was trying to imply that their man is pro-choice, just as Team Jones tried to imply that their candidate missed meetings because she was ill with breast cancer. No, I must be mistaken.

Ensign shouldn't despair, though. Unlike Jones, he's this year's anointee and can probably survive almost any mistakes. And as Guinn learned, anointments may falter, but they rarely fail.