Kennedy and Klobuchar bring out the big guns

09/23/2006

Patricia Lopez, Star Tribune
Last update: September 23, 2006 – 6:21 AM

When a top staff member on the U.S. Senate campaign of DFLer Amy Klobuchar lost her job last week over sneaking a peek at a new ad for Republican candidate Mark Kennedy, she became a casualty of a backstage clash of heavyweight political imagemakers and destroyers.

The ad that Klobuchar’s communications director, Tara McGuinness, watched after a blogger sent it to her was created by Kennedy’s media director, Scott Howell, an A-list Republican media consultant. He helped mastermind wins in an intimidating 11 out of 12 races he worked on in 2002 and produced ads for President Bush’s 2004 race.

Howell’s style runs the gamut from the goofily endearing ads Minnesotans have seen showing Mark Kennedy in a party hat and teased by his brothers, to the razor-edged attack ads from the 2005 Virginia governor’s race. One of those ads said the Democratic candidate in the race would have spared Adolf Hitler from the death penalty.

Howell has worked for the Republican National Committee and cut his teeth with Karl Rove in the early 1990s.

Political insiders have been waiting anxiously for months to see what Howell has in store for Minnesotans in this fall’s campaign.

Howell matched against an equally formidable message designer in Mandy Grunwald, in charge of Klobuchar’s ads. Grunwald is a top Democratic strategist who made her bones in the 1992 juggernaut that brought Bill Clinton to the presidency and was a key member of his war room.

A major player on the national scene, Grunwald is known for ads that make an emotional connection between candidates and viewers. But she can also dish out the rough stuff.

In this election, she’s also directing advertising for U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-NY.

Getting rough

Minnesotans have already seen some of the fireworks in a TV ad that accuses Klobuchar of hypocrisy and shows her with her old state lobbyist registration number strung mugshot-like across her chest. An acid satire radio ad mimics a voice mail directory, giving directions to callers who may want to thank the Hennepin County attorney for having gotten them off on a plea bargain.

Democrats have gotten most of their shots in off the air, dubbing GOP opponent Mark Kennedy “Makeover Mark” in news releases and painting him as a rubber stamp for President Bush.

Campaigns this year have adopted an intensely belligerent style on all levels that reflect the big-money, high-pressure enterprises they have become.

“It’s going to get rough,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania and a national expert on political campaigns.

So far, Republicans have gone on the offensive, and in Minnesota’s Senate and congressional races, the edgiest ads have come from their side.

“Republicans have said they’re going to go in and destroy opponents on everything that matters on the local level,” Jamieson said. “First you demoralize the other side, drive down their vote, then you mobilize your own side.”

The strategy is risky, but can work because Republicans have had a more sophisticated approach to voter turnout, using microtargeting, direct mail, phones and e-mail in a way that had Democrats scrambling in 2004, Jamieson said.

The standard Democratic attack this year, Jamieson said, “has been to tie Bush to Republican candidates in any way possible.”

Surge of negativity

Often, the hardest shots in the political free-for-all come from independent forces on either side. That allows candidates to keep at least one foot out of the mud.

In the Sixth District congressional race between DFLer Patty Wetterling and Republican Michele Bachmann, it is the National Republican Congressional Committee that has sent hit pieces out on Wetterling.

But in the Senate race, Kennedy is trailing so badly in the polls that he has been the one to go negative on TV and radio.

“It’s surprising to have this coming from the candidate himself at this point in the race,” said Morgan Felchner, editor of Campaign and Elections magazine, referring to radio and TV ads in which Kennedy accuses Klobuchar of hypocrisy.

So far, Klobuchar has yet to mention Kennedy in her TV ads, although she has referred repeatedly to the “culture of corruption” among Republican leaders.

Expect a “surge of negativity” in the coming weeks, said John Geer, a political sciencist at Vanderbilt University and author of a book on negative advertising. Control of the House and Senate is at stake, he said, and “frankly, neither party has a lot to run on.”

Contest is a rematch

The Howell-Grunwald battle will set the tone, and it may be intensified by the fact that they have tangled before.

They competed in the 2004 Bush-Kerry race and, most notably, in Minnesota’s scorchingly emotional 2002 U.S. Senate race. Howell handled advertising for challenger Norm Coleman while Grunwald did the same for Paul Wellstone and then Walter Mondale.

Howell had launched ads harshly criticizing Wellstone’s voting record. But when Wellstone died in a plane crash 13 days before the election, Howell deftly switched gears. Once the two campaigns were back on the air, Howell’s ads featured mood-laden shots of Coleman, hair blowing in the wind, wearing a bomber-style jacket, mourning the death of his opponent.

Time magazine later said the ads “hit the perfect tone,” and helped Coleman eke out a win over Mondale.

“This could be a grudge match,” said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Governance and Politics at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute. “That was a highly emotional race.

“This is going to be like watching two seasoned coaches who’ve played against each other many times. They know each other’s styles, and they’ll be ready.”