Welcome back to Ad Watch, our newest special series, which is running weekly from now until election week. The purpose of this series is to attempt to catalog, or index, the many campaign ads that are going up on television (and sometimes radio) to influence elections in the Pacific Northwest. In each installment, we’ll briefly describe ads we’ve seen that are being paid for by candidates, ballot measure coalitions, political parties, or shadowy special interests masquerading as grassroots groups, and provide links so you can watch the ads for yourself.
This week in Ad Watch:
- Obama/Biden 2012 has quietly released a brutal new ad entitled My Job that consists solely of audio extracted from the video Mother Jones released of Mitt Romney speaking at a fundraiser for high-roller donors back in May. As Romney dismisses the “forty-seven percent”, images are shown of families, veterans, and working men and women with somber or quiet expressions. “I’ll never convince them to take personal responsibility and care for their lives,” Romney says as the ad ends. The ad is similar to a spot Obama/Biden produced back in the summer, titled Firms.
- Another Obama/Biden ad released this week is called Table. It’s long — it clocks in at two minutes — and its star is the president himself, discussing his fairly modest goals for a second term. It is reportedly set to run in battleground states, but it may also be seen on cable channels here.
- Rob McKenna’s newest TV spot (We Need Jobs) is quite possibly the weakest ad his campaign has released so far. It awkwardly and unconvincingly claims Jay Inslee stands for “more government, more taxes, and more lost jobs” … without even bothering to level any specific charges against Inslee.
Neither Maria Cantwell nor Michael Baumgartner’s campaigns have unveiled new ads since the summer. Perhaps they’re keeping their power dry until October — though if you ask us, that doesn’t make too much sense, because the airwaves are only getting nosier and more crowded.
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