WATCH: This Is What Antigay Politicans Will Face One Day

[William769]

It's never been done before, so The Advocate demonstrates what a negative campaign commercial might look like against an anti-LGBT candidate.

No candidate has ever been attacked in a television ad for being antigay. But what such a commercial would look like isn’t hard to imagine given the many examples from politics.

In 2012, Claire McCaskill approved a negative ad campaign that targeted Todd Akin, her Republican competitor for the 2012 Senate race in Missouri. Titled “Is Todd Akin Mainstream?” the ad raised three hot button issues — Social Security, minimum wage, and student loans—and outlined how she said Akin’s positions would be politically detrimental to these programs.

As a negative campaign, the ad was successful because it illustrated how Akin’s stances on “the mainstream issues that matter” differed from the “majority of Missouri” through bullet points, audio and video recordings, and quotations. LGBT activists seem to agree that if an antigay candidate were targeted now, it would likely be with a campaign like this one that tries to cast the opponent as an extremist.

In the video above, The Advocate used the Akin campaign as a template and filled in the content using one of the most antigay candidates in the current playing field — E.W. Jackson, who is running for lieutenant governor in Virginia. It’s designed to help fill in the blanks on what a groundbreaking attack ad might look like.

Video at link

http://www.advocate.com/politics/election/2013/07/10/watch-what-attack-ad-could-look-versus-antigay-candidate

[MNBrewer]

1. Interesting. I look forward to the day when these types of ads are real.