Political Stories: Finding the Key to Beating Jim Hunt
When you start a campaign 25 points behind but have a lot of money you start running ads early and we did – 20 months before the election.
Now the folks who worked at the Congressional Club were ideologues. True believers. We saw the world in black and white. Us versus Them. Light versus Darkness. Liberals versus conservatives. And in all that company of ideologues the one with the purest heart was Tom Ellis.
Now part of Jesse was an ideologue too. But another part of Jesse was a good old-fashioned red-blooded southern demagogue and sometimes Jesse the ideologue would round a corner and run head on into Jesse the demagogue and most times when that happened the demagogue came out on top. For instance, when John East ran for Senate against Bob Morgan in 1980, Mr. Ellis asked Jesse to do an ad about Morgan voting to give away the
On the other hand to a true ideologue like Tom Ellis replacing Bob Morgan was pretty near a moral crusade. Practical questions like political risks generally didn’t matter.
And that’s pretty much how Tom Ellis ran campaigns: As ideological crusades. About liberals versus conservatives. The way he saw it an election without issues was meaningless so he started Jesse’s 1984 campaign by running ads (starting in March of 1983) hammering away at Hunt saying Hunt was a liberal – only it didn’t work. Voters just didn’t believe Hunt was liberal. So we got nowhere. In November after nine months of spending money like water we’d only gained 6 points in the polls.
In December we pulled in our horns and stopped running ads so we could refortify the exchequer and, right then, when we needed it least Jim Hunt attacked Jesse the first time: The Democratic Party put on two radio ads ripping Jesse for voting for a tobacco tax.
Today a tobacco tax is about as popular as a tax can be but back then the ‘ticket splitters’ were rural conservative Democrats and Jesse voting for a tobacco tax didn’t appeal to them at all.
Arthur flew down to
Bob Harris who did all the research for the campaign had a disease like muscular dystrophy so he worked at home, confined to his bed, and listened in on Arthur’s poll reports on a speaker phone. When Arthur finished talking, Bob said over the speaker, I just faxed you three scripts.
The scripts were simple. Jesse said, I’m Jesse Helms and I opposed the
Since money was tight I suggested we buy radio – which was cheaper than TV – then Arthur said, Well, if you’re worried about money buy 10-second TV ads – that’s cheaper still.
In those days hardly anyone ever bought 10-second TV ads, but, I’m Jesse Helms and I voted against the Panama Canal giveaway. Where do you stand, Jim? fit just right into ten seconds.
So we made seven or eight old-fashioned crawl ads – just white words crawling over a black screen with Jesse’s voice reading the copy then we showed the ads to the press and the reporters hooted – they said they weren’t fooled by those old-fashioned crawl ads. They figured the whole thing was just a P.R. stunt to get press.
Well, after Christmas we polled again and lightning had struck – we’d spent two million dollars in nine months to gain six points but in three weeks of crawl ads, with a couple of hundred thousand dollars, Jesse had moved up another six points.
Mr. Ellis said to Arthur he wouldn’t have believed it was possible and Arthur said, This is going to be hard for you to understand. Because you’re an ideologue. But this election isn’t about issues. It’s about character. Jim Hunt’s character. And if you’re going to defeat Hunt you’re going to have to learn how to run a completely different kind of campaign.
And that’s how we found the key to defeating Hunt.
To be continued… The New York Committee to Elect Jim Hunt
Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.
Political Stories: Finding the Key to Beating Jim Hunt
When you start a campaign 25 points behind but have a lot of money you start running ads early and we did – 20 months before the election.
Now the folks who worked at the Congressional Club were ideologues. True believers. We saw the world in black and white. Us versus Them. Light versus Darkness. Liberals versus conservatives. And in all that company of ideologues the one with the purest heart was Tom Ellis.
Now part of Jesse was an ideologue too. But another part of Jesse was a good old-fashioned red-blooded southern demagogue and sometimes Jesse the ideologue would round a corner and run head on into Jesse the demagogue and most times when that happened the demagogue came out on top. For instance, when John East ran for Senate against Bob Morgan in 1980, Mr. Ellis asked Jesse to do an ad about Morgan voting to give away the
On the other hand to a true ideologue like Tom Ellis replacing Bob Morgan was pretty near a moral crusade. Practical questions like political risks generally didn’t matter.
And that’s pretty much how Tom Ellis ran campaigns: As ideological crusades. About liberals versus conservatives. The way he saw it an election without issues was meaningless so he started Jesse’s 1984 campaign by running ads (starting in March of 1983) hammering away at Hunt saying Hunt was a liberal – only it didn’t work. Voters just didn’t believe Hunt was liberal. So we got nowhere. In November after nine months of spending money like water we’d only gained 6 points in the polls.
In December we pulled in our horns and stopped running ads so we could refortify the exchequer and, right then, when we needed it least Jim Hunt attacked Jesse the first time: The Democratic Party put on two radio ads ripping Jesse for voting for a tobacco tax.
Today a tobacco tax is about as popular as a tax can be but back then the ‘ticket splitters’ were rural conservative Democrats and Jesse voting for a tobacco tax didn’t appeal to them at all.
Arthur flew down to
Bob Harris who did all the research for the campaign had a disease like muscular dystrophy so he worked at home, confined to his bed, and listened in on Arthur’s poll reports on a speaker phone. When Arthur finished talking, Bob said over the speaker, I just faxed you three scripts.
The scripts were simple. Jesse said, I’m Jesse Helms and I opposed the
Since money was tight I suggested we buy radio – which was cheaper than TV – then Arthur said, Well, if you’re worried about money buy 10-second TV ads – that’s cheaper still.
In those days hardly anyone ever bought 10-second TV ads, but, I’m Jesse Helms and I voted against the Panama Canal giveaway. Where do you stand, Jim? fit just right into ten seconds.
So we made seven or eight old-fashioned crawl ads – just white words crawling over a black screen with Jesse’s voice reading the copy then we showed the ads to the press and the reporters hooted – they said they weren’t fooled by those old-fashioned crawl ads. They figured the whole thing was just a P.R. stunt to get press.
Well, after Christmas we polled again and lightning had struck – we’d spent two million dollars in nine months to gain six points but in three weeks of crawl ads, with a couple of hundred thousand dollars, Jesse had moved up another six points.
Mr. Ellis said to Arthur he wouldn’t have believed it was possible and Arthur said, This is going to be hard for you to understand. Because you’re an ideologue. But this election isn’t about issues. It’s about character. Jim Hunt’s character. And if you’re going to defeat Hunt you’re going to have to learn how to run a completely different kind of campaign.
And that’s how we found the key to defeating Hunt.
To be continued… The New York Committee to Elect Jim Hunt
Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.