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Title: A Favorite Villain in Election Ads: New York
Source:
NYT
URL Source: [None]
Published: Oct 21, 2010
Author: David W. Chen
Post Date: 2010-11-01 10:15:23 by Prefrontal Vortex
Keywords: None
Views: 47
Comments: 1
Ominous shadows on the Statue of Liberty in a campaign ad for Marco Rubio, the Republican candidate for Senate in Florida. By DAVID W. CHEN A Georgia congressman is shown driving around New York in a convertible with the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, soaking in cheers at a ticker-tape parade on Wall Street and then basking in the bright lights of Times Square. A Kentucky Republican candidate for Senate is attacked for holding a fund-raiser in New York, as images of a limousine and the Chrysler Building appear on the screen. A Republican candidate for attorney general in Michigan is depicted wearing a “I Love Wall Street” T-shirt and waving a Goldman Sachs pennant, as New Yorkers strut by on the streets of Manhattan. With less than two weeks to go before the election, dozens of races remain too close to call. But one clear loser, already, is New York City. More than 200 candidates around the country have run ads demonizing the financial industry or Wall Street, often trying to tie an opponent to a culture of greed and government bailouts. But the taint is also spreading to the city itself, which is being portrayed in an unflattering and unsettling way. In one spot, the Statue of Liberty is enveloped by threatening shadows. In others, photos of a Wall Street street sign segue into scenes of corporate types swilling cocktails or puffing cigars, and smug-looking bankers roaming the streets of Manhattan. “One of the most important things about the election ads is not how they affect the election, but how they affect the narrative after the election,” said Glenn W. Richardson Jr., a political scientist at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, and author of “Pulp Politics: How Political Advertising Tells the Stories of American Politics.” “Which is: New York will take a beating, because people are being buffeted with negative associations.” The ads represent a stark change from how the city has been portrayed by out-of-state candidates in recent years. After Sept. 11, 2001, the city was a symbol of patriotism and of the war against terrorism. Former Senator Max Cleland of Georgia, in an unsuccessful bid for re-election in 2002, ran an ad featuring him reading a poem praising the city for unifying the country after the terror attack. Even as recently as 2005, Jon S. Corzine, the former governor of New Jersey, stressed his Wall Street experience in his commercials. But this year, since Sept. 1 alone, Democrats and Republicans have poured more than $100 million into more than 100 ads that have mentioned Wall Street as a major theme, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising. Most have been attack ads. Most have been sponsored by Democratic candidates and their supporters. And 98 percent of the anti-New York ads for Congressional contests have aired in districts outside of New York, said Erika Franklin Fowler, a political science professor at Wesleyan University who directs the Wesleyan Media Project. “I don’t think citizens suddenly see an ad that features Wall Street and say, ‘I hate New York,’ ” she said. “But the advertising is meant to reinforce prior perceptions, and the more times you see an image, and hear a message, that message sinks in.” That message is reinforced by references to popular culture. Two ads have sprung up that are movie-trailer parodies of “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.” They are being run against two Republicans who used to work on Wall Street: Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, who is running for Senate, and John R. Kasich of Ohio, who is running for governor. The anti-Toomey spot, called “Wall Street Toomey,” even includes an audio clip of the character Gordon Gekko’s famous line about greed. Any connection to the city seems fair game: Even in upstate New York, Representative Bill Owens, a Democrat, has criticized his Republican challenger, Matt Doheny, a former managing director for Deutsche Bank, as a New York banker who cannot be trusted. Mr. Owens’s ad opens with an arrow pointing to a photograph of “Matt Doheny’s Apartment” on East 34th Street, then zooms in on an old address label, as “New York, NY” is highlighted in yellow marker. The ad criticizes the layoffs and executive bonuses that resulted, Mr. Owens charges, from Mr. Doheny’s restructuring of Adelphia Communications, before ending with the images of the Merrill Lynch bull and, once again, his apartment building. “That’s the way they do it,” the narrator sneers, “on Wall Street.” Even setting foot in the city to do what countless politicians have done for years — raise money — prompts questions of hometown loyalty. Such is the case with an ad frowning upon Rand Paul, a Republican who is running for Senate in Kentucky, for kicking off his campaign with a fund-raiser at Webster Hall in Manhattan. But mainly, the Democratic ads criticize Republicans for supporting the privatization of Social Security (or gambling on Wall Street, many ads say) and protecting corporate tax breaks (or benefiting their rich friends in New York). Republicans are using the ads to reinforce their talking points hitting Democrats for supporting bank bailouts and other policies of the Obama administration. To Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has long defended the city’s financial services industry, the commercials reinforce unfair and inaccurate stereotypes. “More than half the New Yorkers who work in the financial-services industry make $71,000 or less, but the reality that these are middle-class jobs sadly isn’t reflected in campaign rhetoric here or anywhere else,” said Stu Loeser, the mayor’s press secretary. The only other non-Washington city being vilified is San Francisco, Ms. Pelosi’s hometown, but that is a distant second, with about a half dozen mentions in ads run in the last month. One of the most memorable anti-New York spots involves Representative Jim Marshall, a Georgia Democrat, and his joy ride through Manhattan with Ms. Pelosi. The two take in the New York skyline and the Wall Street ticker-tape parade (with dollars serving as confetti) before snuggling together in Times Square, as if they were two teenagers on a date at a drive-through in the 1950s.
A Favorite Villain in Election Ads: New York
Published: October 21, 2010
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The relationship between morality and liberty is a directly proportional one. "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." - Ben Franklin
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