To her dismay, Hillbillies co-star Buddy Ebsen called the Shuster campaign and volunteered to make a radio campaign ad in which he called Kulp "too liberal."[13] Kulp said of Ebsen, "'He's not the kindly old Jed Clampett that you saw on the show... It's none of his business and he should have stayed out of it.' She said she and Ebsen 'didn't get along because I found him difficult to work with. But I never would have done something like this to him.'" Garnering 59,449 votes, or just 33.6% to Shuster's 117,203 votes and 66.4%, she lost.[14]
As I understand it, Kulp’s campaign produced a radio commercial that made it sound as if the surviving fellow castmates of beverly hillbillies were in support of her candidacy when they did not. Ebsen, Max Baer, and Donna Douglas were all Republicans. It was that commercial that prompted Ebsen to openly support Kulp’s opponent.