Posted April 28, 2006 by Meredith McGehee

Stand By Your Ad

Images of Adolph Hitler.  Accusations by ex-wives.  Black and white grainy photos.  Ominous-sounding music.

These tools are now the well-known staples of the modern election campaign advertising.  The recent 2005 off-year elections were no different.  In the high profile gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, the mudslinging began early and triggered the usual hand-wringing by observers who lament the growth of negative campaigning. Campaign strategists, however, are more cold-blooded because they know that the reason that negative campaigning is growing is because it works.

Or does it?  Maybe, just maybe, the new “Stand By Your Ad” (SBYA) laws are making a difference in decreasing the impact of negative campaigning.  Both New Jersey and Virginia recently enacted laws that require candidates for state office to appear on their televised advertisements and take responsibility for that ad. 

In Virginia, most news coverage of the gubernatorial campaign noted that the Republican candidate, Jerry Kilgore, went negative early and attacked his Democratic opponent, Tim Kaine, aggressively on the issue of enforcing the death penalty.  One televised ad sought to make it appear that Kaine was sympathetic toward Adolph Hitler because Kaine allegedly opposed the death penalty.  Conventional wisdom was that in an historically Republican-leaning state, the negative campaigning would be effective and drive down Kaine’s support to the point that the coattails of current Democratic Governor Mark Warner would be too weak to overcome the state’s basic leanings.  Because Kilgore was subject to the SBYA law, he was immediately linked to the ads and roundly criticized for the ads in newspapers throughout the state.  Kaine won with 52 percent of the vote.

In New Jersey, a traditionally Democratic-leaning state which enacted an SBYA law in the late 1990s, both candidates ran hard-hitting ads, but a negative ad against U.S. Senator Jon Corzine featuring his ex-wife caught national attention.  Reports indicate that after that ad ran, Corzine’s opponent Doug Forester saw his numbers decline.  Corzine won with 54 percent of the vote.

In achieving passage of SBYA laws, supporters have posited that requiring candidates and other advertisers in political campaigns to appear and take credit for their ads would help “civilize” the tone of a campaign’s discourse.  The thinking is that a candidate who runs a negative ad will think twice about doing so because voters will be turned off by a candidate who is linked to a negative message.  In theory, SBYA informs voters who is speaking (increased sunshine) and provides a disincentive to negative campaigning.  Opponents of SBYA provisions dismiss this thinking, finding it another example of “goo-goo” (good government) gone wild.  They see SBYA requirements as a nuisance; other opponents believe such laws constitute “compelled speech” even though the Supreme Court upheld such provisions when it approved the McCain-Feingold bill (known as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002).

The results in Virginia and New Jersey may have been the product of many other issues – effective campaign strategies by Democrats, candidates’ personalities, local issues or signs of President Bush’s unpopularity.  But these results should also give pause to candidates and their campaign strategists as they reassess the impact of these disclosure laws and their use of negative ads.  SBYA laws may not be a cure-all for negative campaigning, but the recent campaigns in Virginia and New Jersey suggest there is reason to give more thought to the “costs” of negative campaigning.