Paul Bass Photo
They saw that ad of Linda McMahon asking Dick Blumenthal asking how to “create a job.” What was up with that?
Josh Heltke (top photo) and Ashley Swain (bottom photo) aren’t the only ones who saw it. Anyone turning on a TV the past few days has probably noticed that ad, as the race to fill Connecticut’s open U.S. Senate seat reaches its final, attack-commercial saturated stretch.
But unlike most voters in Connecticut, Heltke and Swain haven’t decided whom they’ll vote for on Nov. 2: Democrat Blumenthal or Republican McMahon.
Linda McMahon’s last hope rests in them all seeing this ad (which they probably will) and then all voting for her, along with another small group of voters who say they could change their mind (more of an open question).
In the newest Quinnipiac Poll released Thursday, 97 percent of voters surveyed said they’d decided whom to support. (Blumenthal leads in the poll by 11 points.) Another 7 percent said they’re open to changing their mind.
The debates between the candidates ended Tuesday night. Afterwards, McMahon ducked the press; her unscripted encounters with the pack have gone badly lately.
From here on in, the two candidates will be pouring millions of dollars into TV ads to try to destroy each other’s reputations — and, in McMahon’s case, trying to reverse Blumenthal’s momentum by returning to job-creation as the main issue.
Hence her campaign’s decision to blanket the airwaves with the “How Do You Create A Job?” commercial. Unlike other attack ads, it’s cinema verite: It’s almost purely a video clip of Blumenthal’s wandering, incoherent response to that question posed by McMahon in their first debate. Blumenthal won that debate, but far more people are now seeing that “gotcha” moment in the ad produced by Scott Howell & Co. (Click on the play arrow to watch it.)
Since it first aired last Friday, it has run over 250 times in the Hartford broadcast TV market, 250 times in New York City’s market (which includes Fairfield County), and 350 times on cable systems throughout Connecticut, according to McMahon campaign spokesman Ed Patru.
Q Poll Director Douglas Schwartz expressed skepticism Thursday morning about the ad barrage’s impact. He added that two weeks ago, in the last Q Poll on the Senate race, “Most people said that her ads were annoying rather than informative. Most people said they were excessive.”
Genuine still-undecided voters stopping by the Shell station at Whalley and Goffe Thursday morning all said that. They’d also all seen the ad — and reacted the way the McMahon campaign hopes they will.
“They’re entirely ridiculous. It gets more ridiculous every year,” said Josh Heltke, a 26-year-old New Haven electrician who was filling his tank. Asked about the latest jobs ad, he said he doesn’t know if he can believe that it’s the real video of what happened. (It is.) “They could have cut and pasted it.”
On the other hand, he said, the video could be true. If so, Heltke said, “he probably doesn’t deserve to be” in elected office.
Swain, who’s 24 and on disability, also blasted the ads. “They keep confusing people,” she said. “You don’t know whether to vote for one person — then another ad comes on right after that.”
Swain was on her way to a McDonald’s, where she planned to tap into a wireless connection to surf the web and “find out the facts for myself” about the candidates. Still, she did find the ad compelling. “To be honest, I thought that it was convoluted,” she said, referring to Blumenthal’s answer.
“I’ve seen the ad,” remarked a Yale tech support worker who was pumping gas into his Ford Taurus. He described himself as an undecided voter leaning toward McMahon.
Even though he too decried the TV ad barrage, and expressed suspicion about the millions of dollars McMahon is pouring into her campaign, he said the jobs commercial probably makes him more likely to cast his vote for McMahon.
“I do think it’s effective. He’s sitting there. He’s stumbling. He doesn’t know what to say — like everyone’s dim view of politicians. They’re pretty good at sidestepping.
“Deep down, subliminally, here I am laughing about it. I’m going to remember it” come voting time.
The man didn’t want his name used: For the first time he feels insecure about his job at Yale because of budget cutbacks. “They’re not cutting. They’re slashing,” he said. “They’re outsourcing.”
In ads and in public appearances, Blumenthal — also seeking a forceful jobs-related attack line — has criticized McMahon for having her company, World Wrestling Entertainment, market toys produced by outsourced labor from China and Pakistan.
The Yale tech support worker hadn’t heard about that.