Posted on 11/14/2006 2:53:11 AM PST by neverdem
Eliot Spitzer had an image problem.
It was early 2006, and Republicans were attacking Mr. Spitzer — the New York State attorney general and a Democratic candidate for governor — as a hothead who cowed critics with bullying legal tactics.
Around that time a stranger came into Mr. Spitzer’s life: a fast-talking adman turned suspense writer from Stuyvesant Town named Jimmy Siegel. Mr. Siegel was a political fan looking for an idol and thought Mr. Spitzer might be it. So Mr. Siegel snagged a ticket to a Spitzer fund-raiser, downed three glasses of red wine, which helped fortify his nerve, and went up to the candidate to offer his services.
Days later, Mr. Siegel was pitching an answer to Mr. Spitzer’s problem.
“If Eliot was worried about anything, it was that Republicans would use the ‘temper’ thing to make him look like a bully,” Mr. Siegel said recently. “So I said, let’s take ‘temper’ and make it about ‘passion.’ Because people like passion. I framed it as, ‘Let’s bring some passion back to Albany.’ ”
In short order Mr. Siegel, a former Madison Avenue creative director who was a novice in politics, was managing the ad campaign, and bringing passion back to Albany soon became a Spitzer motto (along with, “On Day 1, everything changes”).
While Mr. Spitzer’s election last week never seemed in doubt given his steady lead in the polls and fund-raising, Mr. Siegel is nevertheless getting credit as an unseen phenomenon in New York politics for humanizing the governor-elect and for creating highly memorable ads in other races. Beyond his dozen spots for Mr. Spitzer, he also helped shape advertisements for Andrew M. Cuomo (attorney general-elect), Kirsten Gillibrand (congresswoman-elect) and Andrea Stewart-Cousins (who seems poised to win her State Senate race). He worked on a couple of...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Geez Louise, I'd completely forgotten the NY gubernatorial race. Spitzer is bad, bad news, an appropriatebookend to the equally sanctimonious Mayor Bloomberg. Yech.
Spitzer could have stood in the middle of Madison Square Garden and eaten a live baby while being broadcast all over the state and the people of NY would still have elected him governor because he was the guy with the (D) after his name. Doesn't exactly take a brilliant ad exec for that.
Exactly.
I gotta say it's horrible living in NYS surrounded by so many proletarians and their minders the Dems.
The other half goes to the client who is smart enough, and has the cojones to buy it, run it, and stick with it.
The reason there is no Republican Jimmy Siegel is that Republicans really like to come across as stuffy, platitudinous old farts. My God, you would have thought that Tom Kean, Jr., running against an outrageous crook in New Jersey, the slimeball Menendez, was an eighty year old lady! Except that an actual 80-year-old New Jersey lady, Millicent Fenwick had always shown bigger cojones than this hapless milquetoast. The main point in every Republican ad is that you should "Vote for me ... well, because.... I am a Republican and those other fellows are not." Republicans are seeking approval at the Country Club, not fighting with the yobs for votes at Wal-Mart.
Steele had some great advertisement in Maryland, but although it showed him to be a really cool guy, they had absolutely no substance ... no toughness. So, he lost to an absolute dweeb, because he and his handlers were afraid to slap the idiot around.
Did one Republican candidate happen to mention that we are in a world-wide war against (OK, Radical) Islam? And did they mention that if we cut and run, it would only mean more trouble down the road? That Iran has sworn to take out Israel ... that Al-QAIDA is threatening to wipe out the White House? Did one Republican happen to mention that Murtha is a crook ... on film?
Bright spot: Corker demonstrated that not only is Ford an idiot, he is also the crooked son of a crooked dynasty. Corker won.
I did not even hear one (1) Republican talk about how great the economy is under GW. They got Jimmy Siegel, we got Rove. Jimmy is a winner. Karl has a unique talent for turning potential landslides into Republican routs ... at phenomenal cost.
Most of rural, inland California, Oregon, and Washington are quite conservative, as are much of downstate Illinois, central and northern Pennsylvania, western and northern Michigan, and rural Maryland and a few pockets of New York and New England. However, the big city and suburban vote, dominated by racial minorities, irreligious Jews, metrosexuals, union members, perverts, and soccer moms, sets the political tone for these states. Onerous state and Federal regulation of farming, ranching, lumber, and mineral extraction and make these industries less viable and weaken rural economies. In the large metro areas, declining public schools, congested roads, and imperious local governments motivate "white flight."
Preserving conservative power in states teetering into the liberal camp, most notably Colorado and Arizona in the West, Ohio and Indiana in the Midwest, and Virginia and North Carolina in the Southeast, is of paramount importance at this time.
The majority of my family are blue collar,labor union, democrats. When they hear the word republican they get a mental image of the guy from the Monopoly board game. A rotund monocle wearing guy in a top hat that makes obscene amounts of money by exploiting the little guy (them). The vast majority of them have only a surface level knowledge of politics yet they know with certainty that the dems will look out for them. So every election they march off to the polls and dutifully pull the lever for whoever has the (D) after their name. Many of them take as gospel the crap they hear from Olbermann or Mahrer. Whenever I challenge them to defend the position of their (D) politician all I receive in return is the usual Bush=Hitler, America=Nazi Germany, we are living in the great depression pap. As an example none of them could tell you the first thing about the UN, but they can say with certainty that Bolton=Bad. Many probably couldn't tell you how many Justices there are on the Supreme Court, but can say with certainty that Roberts/Alito=Bad. I don't know how to break through to people like this, but I'm afraid that there are plenty more just like my family spread all across the US.
FReepmail me if you want on or off my New York ping list.
The second way may be on social and cultural issues. If your family is white and blue collar, your relatives may become the victims of affirmative action and street crime. The need to please minority voters and their constant search for "root causes" of crime result in strong support for de facto quotas for minorities and kid glove treatment of minority criminals. Blue collar whites in urban areas cannot move into the better suburbs or gated communities. It is usually the poorer whites that are the victims of black on white crime.
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