People often complain about money in politics. In Maine, a campaign managed to take politics out of money in politics. The Oregonian explains: “You might have recently seen a political advertisement about Maine’s Senate race.
That’s because the advertisement mistakenly played in Portland, Oregon, instead of Portland, Maine.
The advertisement, paid for by Republican PAC Defending Main Street, decries “Taxin’ Troy Jackson,” the Democratic candidate facing off against Susan Collins.
Meanwhile, north of the Columbia, political advertising goes on as usual. A “statistical dead heat” race between incumbent Democratic Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Trump-backed Republican challenger John Braun shows both candidates walking a fine line, trying to ply partisanship in their favor, but still trying to distance themselves from perceived craziness within their respective parties (or so says public radio).
But if you want old-fashioned negative campaigning, a Perez attack ad against Braun is pure perfection:
A very simple pitch. Effective? Seemingly.
Yet challenger Braun says the ad is misleading. The ad’s charge is he didn’t call the son of a worker who died on the job — of a company Braun runs; but this is the result, says Braun, of the fact that he talked to the son in person more than once at the job site.
This is an ad that could backfire. Unlike the Maine ad running in Oregon, which just fizzled into nothing but laughter.