Score one for Ed Gillespie, who is running against Mark Warner (D-Va.) for the Senate. Last night, in the Washington football team’s stirring victory over the hated Cowboys, Gillespie’s campaign ran an ad in which he chided Warner for not opposing “Harry Reid’s bill” to change the team’s offensive name, or refusing even to answer whether he, in fact, does oppose it.
Presumably pride in the team soared throughout the upset, so Gillespie’s timing was excellent. While on the surface the ad may seem trivial, my guess is that it was extremely effective for those who view the controversy as just another fabrication of politically correct-obsessed liberals.
In other words, the ad appeals, first and foremost, to Gillespie’s base: voters who are sick and tired of Harry Reid and all those other liberals going after symbols of history and local pride, like the Redskins or the Confederate flag. But the ad operates on two more levels to broaden its appeal First, it paints a contrast between Warner as a typical politician who ducks controversial issues and Gillespie as a decisive one who declares his opposition to Reid’s bill. The ad then offers a final punch: why not, Gillespie asks the camera, focus on important issues like jobs and the economy and let the Washington football team sort out its own name?
The ad, which is in my mind ridiculous and wrong, is nonetheless effective in the strange haiku of political advertising. In less than 30 seconds, Warner is portrayed as a weak-kneed liberal who tilts at Harry Reid windmills while Gillespie is a straight-talking problem-solver focused on the things that matter to Virginians. Virginia’s Senate seat is still a safe one for Democrats, but, as I said when he entered the race, Gillespie is a scrapper.
