Our ads centered on 9/11 and the war on terror, and how Lautenberg was out of touch with America and too extreme for New Jersey on the issue of opposing the death penalty for terrorists who murder Americans, and a vote to cut $1 billion from the intelligence budget and $80 billion from the defense budget. We pointed out that if it were up to Frank Lautenberg's extreme views, the killers of Daniel Pearl and even Osama bin Laden himself would be spared the death penalty. The ads were called too "divisive".
We also raised the age issue in three major ads, the softest focusing on the sheer hypocrisy of his criticism of Millicent Fenwick being "too old" for the Senate at age 72, when he will be 79 in January. The hardest ad simply ran a video medley, not unlike the Rush Limbaugh audio medley, showing a bumbling, incoherent Lautenberg from their first debate. The ad ended with a big question mark and was punctuated with voices saying "What?" "Huh?" etc.
None of our ads were factually incorrect. They were smash-mouth politics, which is desperately needed to knock off a nasty, fear-mongering SOB like Lautenberg.
The Forrester campaign REFUSED to run a single one of our ads. Meanwhile Lautenberg was beating their brains in every day on NYC and Philly networks. We told them they would lose. They did. There was never a question.
Pascoe and his team did not even run a single ad at ALL for THREE WEEKS after Torricelli pulled out, wating precious time to define their candidate to the public and losing an opportunity to crush Lautenberg with attack ads and build his negatives while he was still not funded and while the Democrats were still in disarray.
MAke no mistake, despite what was written above, this race was totally winnable using advertising. We were heavily involved in the ads for Chambliss, Talent and Jeb Bush. Those were all highly aggressive campaigns committed to destroying their opponents. They all won. Pascoe and the Forrester team thought it was out of bounds to attack Lautenberg over 9/11 and his disgraceful record on terror, defense and intelligence. However the Chambliss team saw no problem in shredding a triple-amputee Vietnam veteran over national security issues. THIS is the difference. You either win through TOTAL WAR, or the Democrats will defeat you through lies, fear and deception.
The Forrester failure shows how fear of waging total war against the Democrats can lead only to failure.