Just as the miserable weather has driven people indoors and in front of their television sets, the state’s voters are being hit with a flurry of another kind: Campaign ads telling them who is for “smarter, smaller government,” who understands “what’s going on in our streets” and who is simply “one of us.”
Those are just the latest messages that candidates are using to introduce themselves to voters–and maybe take a dig or two at the opposition.
TV ads always are crucial in statewide campaigns. But in some ways they are even more significant this year because the top races–for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination and the GOP primary for the U.S. Senate–are so full of unknowns that one candidate already has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads that joked about his obscurity.
The race for the right to challenge U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun (D-Ill.) this fall has huge numbers of voters undecided between state Comptroller Loleta Didrickson and virtually unknown state Sen. Peter Fitzgerald of Inverness.
In the Democratic gubernatorial primary, only Roland Burris, a former Illinois attorney general and comptroller, can claim substantial name recognition going into the March 17 primary. Former U.S. Atty. Jim Burns is counting on Chicago-area voters recognizing him from his many news conferences.
But former Justice Department official John Schmidt realized he was so little known that he ran 17 days of ads last August in which actors mistook him for John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt. And soft-spoken U.S. Rep. Glenn Poshard of Downstate Marion often made Roll Call magazine’s Obscure Caucus list.
In the coming days and weeks, these strangers will become as familiar as the living room furniture, though perhaps not as comfortable.
“Any candidate has to introduce him or herself to the voting public,” said Joe Novak, a top official in the Poshard campaign who estimated its media budget for the primary at $800,000, about twice what Schmidt spent on his August ads.
For Poshard, that money will be spent in hopes of convincing people that the low-profile congressman is concerned about the same issues that concern them.
One of his recent ads talked about his refusal to take money from political action committees and his opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement. It also told the viewer that he volunteered in Korean orphanages and worked as a high school teacher and coach. “He’s one of us,” the narrator intoned.
Poshard, who has only recently started running ads in Chicago, insisted ads should start only after grass-roots organizing is well under way.
“When people come in and think you can get the support . . . by spending money on ads, that’s putting the roof on before you build the foundation,” Poshard said.
The growing number of ads comes after an autumn and early winter in which many candidates spent more time trying to raise funds than tapping into voter interest. Aside from a few advertising hits, most candidates have been working behind the scenes to get money for media and to set up local organizations.
No one represents that more than Burns. After announcing his plans to run for governor, he dropped out of view for almost three months, holding the first major news conference of his campaign earlier this month when he unveiled a proposal on governmental ethics rules. The proposal, Burns said, was the “cornerstone” of his campaign.
“I feel very good about the way we’re positioned right now. We haven’t spent a penny yet on media,” Burns said afterward. “Campaigns, I’ve said over and over, are way too long and way too expensive. And the real race is January, February to March 17.”
Schmidt, by far the wealthiest of the Democratic field, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in August on ads that sought to make light of his weak name recognition while touting his accomplishments as a top official at the U.S. Justice Department, among other jobs.
In his newest ad, he began to focus on specific issues; last week Schmidt started running a 30-second spot promoting himself as a supporter of gun control who understands “what’s going on in our streets.”
Schmidt’s campaign manager, Ken Snyder, defended the campaign’s spending of so much money early on. Though Schmidt was the No. 3 official at the Justice Department, he hasn’t held a public office that would have given him a high profile such as Poshard, Burris and Burns, according to Snyder.
“The idea that John might need to expend more resources than his opponents to communicate to voters all that he’s accomplished and his vision for the future makes sense,” he said.
Burris so far has relied on his early front-runner status–owing largely to his name recognition from 16 years in public office. Burris said he expects to start his advertising campaign either three or four weeks before the election.
He is unmoved by the fact that his opponents in the Democratic primary already have started.
“Those candidates have to do that, no one knows them,” he said. “I don’t have to do that. We will use our commercials to get our message out. We won’t use commercials for people to get to know Roland Burris. You line up 100 people in Illinois, 80 of them will know Roland Burris and will know his record.”
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In the Republican primary for the Senate, the wealthy Fitzgerald started airing ads last fall. One of his latest ads contends he would be an independent senator who would speak out against a federal government that “shows great disrespect for the taxpayers and working families.”
“We’re establishing that we are the anti-tax candidate,” said his campaign manager, Mike Cys.
A late entry in the race at the urging of the Republican Party’s moderate leadership, Didrickson has had to focus more on money-raising and building an organization.
In her first ad introduced last week, she tells of how her “record is one of smarter, smaller government.” Featuring Gov. Jim Edgar and former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole, it also appears to play to Fitzgerald’s criticism of Didrickson as the candidate of the establishment and, by extension, the status quo.
“I’m running with the Republican Party,” she said. “I’m not running against the Republican Party.”
Though the TV portion of her campaign is starting about four months after Fitzgerald launched his, Didrickson noted that her first primary ads are going up two months before Election Day. That is well ahead of the schedule set by the last establishment candidate to run against a conservative challenger in a U.S. Senate primary–Lt. Gov. Bob Kustra.
In 1996, Kustra waited until shortly before voters were to decide between him and Al Salvi to run his first campaign ads, and Kustra lost.
“We’re out early,” Didrickson said. “We’re not taking anything for granted.”