Kennedy’s first TV ad in Senate race treads lightly

07/26/2006

Patricia Lopez
Star Tribune
Last update: July 26, 2006 – 5:25 PM

GOP Senate candidate Mark Kennedy wants you to know a few things about him: He likes plaid shirts, met his wife at a 4-H booth at the State Fair and grew up sleeping in the same room with three brothers who like to rib him.

In his first ad of the campaign season, Kennedy displays a quirkier, softer side with a spot that features uptempo music and rapid cuts of his parents, children and three brothers crowded on the lower bunk of the room they grew up in in Pequot Lakes, Minn.

The ad comes a day after DFL candidate Amy Klobuchar sent up her second ad, one that highlights her work on a 48-hour maternity-stay bill that became law.

Heidi Frederickson, Kennedy’s campaign press secretary, said the campaign decided to take a lighter approach to its first ad. “We wanted to have some fun with it,” she said.

In the ad, his brothers talk of being close growing up—“too close,” one brother puts it—and his wife gently characterizes him as “different.”

A daughter tackles the most frequent criticism of Kennedy by Democrats: his 90-percent-plus record of voting with President Bush. “My dad’s not a party guy,” she intones, as the camera shows a black-and-white clip of Kennedy with a party hat on, waving his hands. “I meant he doesn’t do whatever the party says to,” she says.

At the end, Kennedy says, “I don’t know why, but I approved this message.”

Frederickson said the statewide ad will air for at least a week, with issue-oriented ads to follow.