Friday, Oct. 25, 2002 | 5:14 a.m.
WEEKEND EDITION: Oct. 27, 2002
Ruby Jones arms herself with a simple weapon each night of this campaign season.
The mute button.
The Summerlin resident is one of many voters fed up with the negative political commercials appearing every evening during newscasts, programs and even reruns of game shows on cable stations.
"These people are asking me to vote for them, and they're not telling me what they do," Jones said. "They're only telling me what the other guy did."
With early voting in its second weekend, candidates are flooding the airwaves with TV ads highlighting more about what's wrong with the opponent than what's right with themselves.
It's an election cycle longtime politician and former Gov. Bob Miller calls the "most negative in 50 years," and it's forcing political campaigns to find a tenuous balance between making the differences clear and alienating voters.
"It's all about perception," longtime campaign consultant Kent Oram said. "A candidate can (run a) clean (campaign) for months and months but if he is the subject of repeated attacks, he has to counter it, and that one counter could be seen as negative."
In what has been the most negative campaign on the ballot, Democratic congressional candidate Dario Herrera is hoping he can get more bang out of two weeks worth of positive ads than he did with two months of finger-pointing in 30-second snippets. Eric Herzik, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, said the strategy "could absolutely work.
"Sure, he's having to adapt his strategy, but it's not a long-shot strategy," Herzik said.
Herrera announced that he would run a positive campaign during the last two weeks. His announcement came at the same time that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee pulled money for ads from in his race against Republican Jon Porter.
Both national parties have been funding negative ads. Herrera had tied up local campaign money in TV time and is using that for positive messages.
Some, such as Porter's campaign consultant Mike Slanker, suggest the positive move was just designed to offset the loss of money.
"It's a desperate move," Slanker said.
But Herzik said there is a time-tested tradition of starting positive, going negative and ending positive.
"You begin with warm fuzzies and introduce yourself, and when you find out it doesn't work, you go negative," Herzik said. "As soon as you go negative, your opponent responds, but when the campaign draws to an end, both campaigns decrease the number of negative ads they use."
Herzik said Herrera runs a risk in pulling his negative ads, but says Porter could also be treading risky waters.
"If Porter continues to run even more negative ads, that could backfire because people might see him as nasty," Herzik said.
Consultants say they try to have a positive ad running at all times, even if there are three negatives running.
"You have to always have a positive spot on to give people a reason to vote for you," Slanker said.
Miller, a Democrat who served 10 years as governor, said he thinks ultimately Herrera will benefit.
"It's courageous, and I think his is an example others should follow," Miller said.
There is a reason campaigns go negative, using ominous music, foreboding shadowy images of candidates and partial newspaper quotes. They work, political observers say.
"Negative ads inform voters," said David Damore, political science professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "Studies show that voters who are exposed to higher amounts of negative information remember more."
Television has bred the 30-second attack, an art form preferred by political consultants because it sticks with viewers in the most dominant medium.
For candidates who are behind in the polls or running against a tough incumbent, the negative ad is the only way to go. And if a race is tight, as is the attorney general campaign between Republican Brian Sandoval and Democrat John Hunt, you can expect negative ads from both candidates as each tries to gain an edge.
Campaign consultants say part of the strategy is defensive.
Slanker said Republicans were forced to respond to an ad launched for Herrera.
"They have been running negative ads since Labor Day," Slanker said. "It's forced us to have response ads and it's made this particular campaign more negative than most."
But the tit for tat in 30 second snippets turns many people off. Jessica Peterson, a 20-year-old Art Institute of Las Vegas student, thinks the public is suffering in the 3rd Congressional District.
When Porter came to her school recently for a campaign visit, she asked him to define his position on Social Security because a Herrera ad airing at the time made it appear that Porter would hurt senior citizens.
"The commercials are not telling the truth, and they are so wrong," Porter told her.
But Peterson didn't distinguish between the candidates at the time, lumping both into the same negative category.
"You see ads about Dario Herrera and Jon Porter and they don't explain anything," she said before Herrera went positive. "It's a weird kind of game between them, and neither one of them has even spoken about their plan for Social Security."
When Herrera announced he was going positive, he said: "People are not distinguishing between the ads."
Even when Herrera had negative ads on the air, his campaign manager, Achim Bergmann, said Herrera's ads weren't of the same caliber as Porter's ads.
"Our ads have all been about the issues, not about personal issues," Bergmann said. "That's a clear difference, and I think they've sunk to an all-time low."
The difference, political consultants say, is what you attack your opponent on: personal or political issues. Campaigns often call attack ads "issue" ads when they use their opponent's record or statements to caricature the opponent's views.
In the Herrera-Porter race, both sides have attacked each other on issues, trying to make the other one look extreme.
Damore, who is studying the advertising in that race with a grant from the Pew Charitable Trust, said the distinction between the types of ads used in the campaign paralleled the candidates' platforms.
"Herrera wants you to think about health care and Social Security," Damore said. "Jon Porter wants you to think about the actual individual you're voting for."
A recent Porter example highlights Clark County's Regional Justice Center project, which is a year behind and at least $33 million over budget. Clark County Commission Chairman Herrera is blamed.
"Who's minding the store?" the ad says.
Most voters don't know that the county manager actually oversees that project, and although Herrera is commission chairman, he doesn't really have a say in day-to-day operations.
Negative ads take as many forms as a consultant can imagine. Some are simple "compare and contrast," showcasing one candidate (usually with a smiling photo) against perceived troubles with the other candidate (usually with an unflattering photo).
Other ads focus specifically on an opponent's record or actions, calling them into question.
In Nevada's 3rd Congressional District, Independent Pete O'Neil says he has watched his two main opponents dabble in all manner of negative ads during the campaign.
"People tell me they don't think either candidate is showing real character based on those ads," O'Neil said. "I'm not on TV because I can't afford it, but if I were, it wouldn't be like that."
One strategy candidates use when they don't want to be perceived as negative is a variation of what Herrera did -- getting other officials to call for an end to the nastiness.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., stepped into the attorney general's race to suggest that attacks against fellow Democrat Hunt were unfounded and nasty.
Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, a Democrat, is the one calling for an end to negative campaigning in new Herrera spots.
Damore said that while voters might complain about negative campaigning, it's not keeping them home on Election Day.
The ads "generally don't have any impact on turnout," Damore said. "They're really designed to fire up the partisans."
There's no statistical proof that negative ads push voters away from the polls. But the ads continue to change the face of political campaigns.
"If someone could run an all-positive campaign in a close race and win, it might change the way political consultants think about future races," Herzik said. "In a close race you have to show some contrasts."
As an example, Herzik cited the lieutenant governor's race in which Democratic candidate Erin Kenny already has two negative ads airing to attack incumbent Republican Lorraine Hunt.
Hunt's ad just shows what she has done in office -- a strategy Herzik says works well for an incumbent with little or no competition. But with Kenny closing the gap, Herzik said Hunt will have to go negative.
"If she doesn't, and if she loses this race, political consultants will just put that in their back pocket to remember for the next cycle," Herzik said.
Porter and Herrera's campaigns will spend more than $1 million each on television spots, with their parties and related organizations chipping in enough to push the race above the $4 million mark.
Campaigns know they will need money for ads and spend most of the year raising funds.
A basic commercial can be produced for $500, but the slick pieces dominating Southern Nevada airwaves cost tens of thousands of dollars apiece.
Airing the spots is also expensive -- beginning at $9,000 per 30-second spot during a top-rated prime time show such as "CSI" on CBS, according to Dan Schwarz, national sales manager for KLAS Channel 8.
"We're seeing heavy buys in the attorney general's race, the race for lieutenant governor and the new congressional district," he said. "The race that tends to be driving the political dollars is the new congressional race."
As a result, candidates for down-ticket races such as judge, district attorney and sheriff have to pay more for their spots.
When the Herrera and Porter campaigns purchase time it is usually in blocks of $200,000 or more, leaving fewer spots for other candidates. Right now, even if a District Court candidate has the money to run an ad, but hasn't yet purchased the time, the candidate is out of luck.
"The irony is that during the time of year when these ads should be the cheapest, they actually become the most expensive," said Paul Taylor, a former Washington Post political reporter who is president of the Alliance for Better Campaigns.
The alliance -- a nonprofit, nonpartisan public-interest group that promotes broadening the reach of campaigns -- argues that when money becomes the arbiter of who gets heard in an election, the public suffers.
Herrera and Porter must each advertise on the same stations and during the same type of programming -- usually local news -- to counter each other. An ad during the top-rated news program on a network affiliate costs significantly more than a similar ad on a cable station.
Since cable is an option, everyone from public administrator candidates to incumbents such as Gov. Kenny Guinn can get on the air without the trouble they face on network affiliates.
Amber Michael, general sales manager for Las Vegas ONE -- a partnership of Las Vegas Sun, KLAS and Cox Communications -- said a candidate can get on cable television with just a small amount of cash.
"They could buy $1,000 on cable and get some decent frequency," Michael said. "A lot of the times you'll see the smaller guys on cable."
Oram, who has handled races for decades in Las Vegas, said since television has become a "must do" in big races, the ads often cancel themselves out.
In the early 1950s, when the first political ads aired, they were a novelty. Now, with the flood of TV ads, the key is impact and repetition.
Repetition is important because many voters won't recall a single ad, but remember the serial effect of the advertising.
"I just see Porter and Herrera all of the time," said Jose Ortiz, who is not registered to vote, but said he watches a lot of TV news and sees many political ads. "Sometimes the ads say something about Social Security or Nevada Power, but I don't really remember any one of them."
That repetition, though, runs the risk of overkill, whether it's positive or negative, issues-oriented or personal.
Or, as Oram notes, "It's all in the eyes of the beholder."
For Ruby Jones, it's simple.
"I just walk out of the room," she says, "or hit my mute button."
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