The latest attack ad in Colorado’s acrimonious Senate battle shows a hippie standing next to a VW van and talking about Democrat Mark Udall’s support for a Department of Peace. As the hippie opens the side door to the Volkswagen, smoke billows out.
“Whether that’s pot smoke or not . . . you know, it could just be an engine overheating,” said Tim Pearson, a spokesman for Freedom’s Watch, the deep-pocketed conservative group paying for the ad, which began running statewide Tuesday.
The point is to hit Udall for his support five years ago for a proposed Cabinet-level Department of Peace, but it also riffs on opponents’ attacks of Udall as a Boulder County liberal, with all the stereotypes that implies.
But with the smoke pouring out of the van at the end, there is a suggestion that experts say could be aimed at something else: introducing into the campaign Udall’s more than 3-decade-old marijuana bust that Republicans have been talking about for months but so far has gotten little traction.
“No candidate would ever authorize an ad like this. But with our screwy campaign finance system, you’ve now empowered these independent groups to be as over the top as they want to be,” said Eric Sondermann, an expert in political advertising in Denver.
Udall, a five-term congressman, was arrested for misdemeanor marijuana possession in 1972, when he was in his early 20s and driving across Arizona.
A state trooper who searched Udall’s car found three small bags of marijuana and a few joints. Udall spent the night in jail and paid a $300 fine.
“In 1973 I made a mistake. I took responsibility for it then, I learned from it, and I’ve tried to teach my kids to be smarter than I was 35 years ago,” he said Wednesday.
The smoke in the ad “might be a way to put (Udall’s arrest) into play via the blogs and others who are going to speculate about whether that’s what they meant,” Sondermann said. “And the speculation itself can be as effective as the charge.”
By now it’s a well-worn strategy of the modern campaign — the art of (not so subtle) suggestion that provides plausible deniability but gets the point across.
Did Barack Obama really mean to refer to Sarah Palin when, of all the expressions he could have used to ding McCain’s policy turns, he said, “You can put lipstick on a pig”?
The McCain camp says yes. Obama on Monday called it mere coincidence.
When Republican Bob Schaffer’s campaign constantly refers to Udall as a Boulder liberal, they say they’re simply making a geographical designation. But it’s also clearly aimed at evoking stereotypes of the crazy left.
In the case of Udall’s pot bust, Republicans have been talking about it to reporters at least since January, but they have also been careful not to bring up the issue publicly.
Walt Klein, a senior adviser to the Schaffer campaign, responded to the marijuana bust in the Colorado Springs Independent in January, saying, “I don’t think that’s any kind of an issue.”
But independent groups have been aggressive players so far in the state’s Senate race — a key congressional battleground. Freedom’s Watch, the ad’s sponsor, has close ties to former Bush administration officials and is chaired by Mel Sembler, a major Bush fundraiser, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Sondermann said that he thinks the ad will make people chuckle, but it may be so over the top that it won’t impact many votes.
“For people already disinclined to vote for Udall, it will give them added fodder for why they aren’t in Udall’s camp. Voters vote in the present and future tense much more so than in the past tense,” he said.
Michael Riley: 303-954-1614 or [email protected]
