Weekly Open Thread: Worst Political Ads Ever?

Let’s try something different this week.  We’ve all endured a constant drubbing of political TV ads for most of our lives.  Most of them suffer from their unremarkable sameness: cookie cutter ads dealing with issues and personalities in wholly superficial and misleading ways.  Of course, what can you expect in 30 to 60 seconds?

Still, I think we all have an idea of what makes an ad a total dud.  In the comments, please post links (YouTube preferred) to political ads by candidates, parties, or independent groups that you consider to be especially awful.

To get the ball rolling, I’ll kick things off with this 2006 ad by LA-01 Democratic challenger Stacey Tallitsch.  The YouTube link implies that this thing actually made it onto the airwaves (“broadcast version”), but I have my doubts.

Apparently only 4% of LA-01 voters “had enough”. Ouch.

And who could forget this gem by wingnut hero Vernon Robinson?

Got anything worse?  And when I say “worst”, I do not mean ads that advocate for bad causes/bad candidates (Bush, Mark Foley, etc).  I mean ads with questionable marketing sense.  Have at it–and do not let party affiliation inhibit you.

66 thoughts on “Weekly Open Thread: Worst Political Ads Ever?”

  1. There are scores of very effective GOP smear ads that pop into my head, some which were fiendishly clever and even humorous, and others which were insulting and backfired.  One that fit both categories was last year’s ad with the mob thug on his cell phone lamenting the fact that New Jersey Democrat Bob Menendez was under criminal investigation.  Here in the Midwest, I thought it was hilarious, but apparently Italian-Americans in New Jersey weren’t laughing and found the ad to feed into stereotypes.

    But if I have to boil it down to merely ineffective and incompetent ads, I think I’d clump the collective work of MN-01 Republican incumbent Gil Gutknecht last year.  Every shred of evidence confirmed he was gonna be in for a helluva fight against Tim Walz, and that he could see it coming, yet Gutknecht was content to run a month’s worth of weary, canned ads.  Most of these ads were about tax cuts, and Gutknecht didn’t address the audience in a single one of them outside of his “I approved this message” tagline. 

    Lamer yet was Gutknecht’s 11th hour radio ad in which he was “setting the record straight” in response to a Walz TV ad that featured a goofy looking photo of Gutknecht.  The G-man told the audience that the photo from the ad was taken at a charity cancer auction in which Gutknecht was the auctioneer.  The moral of the story in the Gutknecht ad:  “no good deed goes unpunished”.  Uh, sure Gil.  In retrospect, I’m convinced this guy was trying to lose last year.

  2. This is an ad that consists mainly of non sequiturs, with a lot of lies as well. But that isn’t what makes it so weird.

    The weird part is that the basic premise is that Bob Corker is a wussy crybaby mama’s boy, and he approves this message.

    http://www.youtube.c…

    3. Independent Republican Russ Potts. Seriously, at least other politicians can use their silly name a little better then that. Rep. Antony Weiner comes to mind here.

  3. the annoyingly memorable song was actually made into internet ads for like two dozen candidates. But I don’t know if any of them actually tried to put the ad on TV.

    Here’s one of those ads: http://www.youtube.c…

  4. ….was brought to us courtesy of the North Carolina Republican Party back in 1998, a year that brought us some particularly ridiculous ads disproportionately from Republicans.  It featured the “Republican town” of Mayberry, NC, and explained to us that Andy Taylor would have been a Republican, as would Barney Fife, Aunt Bea, Floyd the Barber, etc.  The only Mayberry resident who would be a Democrat would be Otis.  Unfortunately, I can’t find the ad on You Tube, but given that John Edwards beat an incumbent that year, it couldn’t have worked too well.

    1. Wow, you know I was making a big deal of the fact that Harold Ford came within 3 points of beating Corker, but with ads like that, I have to say, how the hell did Ford NOT beat Corker…

  7. Incumbent Nancy Johnson vs Chris Murphy, CT-05… Johnson got clobbered. Nutmeggers did not appreciate the smear, clearly suggested by folks from away.

  8. Seven-year-olds!

    Tased!

    50,000 volts!

    A ridiculous NRCC ad to help protect the loathsome Steve Chabot.

    1. It’s so bizarre; if you’re going to rip off the pets.com puppet, the least you could do is have it talk.

  12. I’ve been looking for an ad that ran in the Chicago media market for the 2006 cycle. It is an attack ad which says something to the effect of:

    “Candidate X wants to take money away from the military AND Candidate X wants to give more money to the arts.”

    For the life of me I do not remember who made this ad or who it is attacking. Can anyone help me out?

    If someone can find a youtube of it I would offer it as my example of a ridiculous, over the top, yet oddly utopian ad.

  13. For the 2004 Florida Democratic Senatorial Primary I remember the Deutsch attack ads against Betty Castor’s handling of the terrorists at USF. I can’t find a video of the ad, but I just remember the screen would go black and a marker indicated something about Betty Castor. They were really pathetic ads for sure. The first time I saw them I was thinking that was a brilliant way to ruin any chance he had of winning the Democratic primary and he really did sink after them. Anyone else remember them?

    I’ve searched a bit for the ad, but even on Deutsch’s 2004 campaign site, there is no video for this one, just a few of the others.

    2. I still can’t find a video, but I found the script via SPTimes: http://www.sptimes.c…

      “Betty Castor didn’t speak out about terrorist professor Sami Al-Arian when she was USF president,” says the voice of a woman in the ad, interrupted by another woman saying, “Shhhhh.”

      “Said she didn’t have one iota of information but the FBI told her,” the voice says before another “Shhhhh,” adding, “Al-Arian was calling the ’93 World Trade Center bombers.”

      It ends with the woman saying: “Can we talk about finding a candidate who can win?”

      Also interesting to note if you read down the SPTimes article, Mark Penn was a campaign consultant for Peter Deutsch. He sure didn’t win that one.

  15. In a toss-up race, Murphy’s most-aired ad (sadly not on YouTube) centered on a bland, laundry-list recitation of “culture of corruption” cliches, and did not mention Iraq once.  But the genius touch was Murphy’s delivery of the buzz phrase “What’s going on down there?” (re: D.C.), as she simultaneously appeared to direct her eyes and her hands to her crotch.

    With the best Democratic midterm wave in at least a generation, and with Ed Rendell and Bob Casey landsliding at the top of the ticket (which no doubt aided Patrick Murphy and Jason Altmire to major upset victories), Murphy went from 51-49 in ’04 to 50.7-49.3 in ’06.

  16. until I saw some of the doozies posted here, like the one at the top. But any collection of “bad ads” has to include the infamous “helicopter ad”, where a candidate for governor of Florida decides that he needs an artificial windstorm as a backdrop to talk about hurricane insurance.

  17. It’s not for a candidate, but rather urging a vote against Constitutional Amendment 42 which would raise the minimum wage in Colorado. (It passed by a large margin.)

    This one features Moses and God (!) criticizing it and was all over the airwaves.
    http://www.youtube.c…

    Then there’s this one, inspired by the HeadOn commercials. It features a cheese grater on a toilet paper roll, with a woman repeating, “42 will GRATE on you.” It was so annoying that it was rarely shown, instead getting press just for its ridiculousness.
    http://video.google….

  18. Although the military ad appearently went over badly

    “Stephen Harper actually announced he wants to increase military presence in our cities. Canadian cities. Soldiers with guns. In our cities. In Canada. We did not make this up”

  19. Two ads helped Mikey DeWhiny become Ohio’s “former” senator.

    Mikey fired his first shot in the early summer with his “Sherrod Brown loves terrorists” ad. Ok, that’s pretty boilerplate even the shot of the 19 9-11 terrorists which was followed by a shot of Brown – straight out of the Saxby Chambliss playbook. But what other idiot Photoshopped flames and moke into a picture of the World Trade Center to make it look more dramatic?

    Thus began Mikey’s loosened grasp on that seat. His downhill slide concluded in equally absurd fashion with a frontal attack on the fact that 20 years ago when Brown was Secretary of State of Ohio, someone in his office was busted – for pot. Ooooooooooh scary! Mikey ran commercials with a hatchet-faced woman who said she was a narc recounting this horrifying episode and concluding “And Sherod Brown not only didn’t fire him – he promoted him!”

    The failure of this ad to turn the tide back in Mikey’s favour sparked one of the most memorable moments of that campaign when, during a debate, he said that someone in Brown’s office had a “marijuana-laced banana.” What was Mikey smoking? Never mind; his Senate career over, he’s moved on to bigger and better things – managing John McCain’s Ohio campaign.

    The guy knows how to pick losers.

    1. Why in the name of all that is left and just would someone develop an ad based on, what I consider to be, the most annoying commercial on the air. That and the creepy Burger King. Why isn’t HE–or a lookalike–in one of these ads? It’s better than giving him his own movie (which, I’m sad to say, is actually happening).

  22. This ad basically sums up the amount of substance in Michael Steele’s 2006 Senate campaign:

    The DSCC had a brilliant response ad:

  24. Does any one know where to find robert’bob” Kruegers political add for the 1993 94 election texas senate i was told by political science teacher it was th worst add in history and they thought it was gonna be so good they even had an add advertising for the adds one time release  

Comments are closed.