With guns blazing: A mailer from Scott Stringer’s campaign that highlights why Eliot Spitzer can’t be trusted to serve as city comptroller. (
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More negative ads, please.
That’s not what you say in polite society. In polite society, you wax indignant about how negative ads coarsen the political debate, distract from “the real issues” and increase public cynicism about politics.
It’s all rubbish, of course. Ever since Thomas Jefferson financed a newspaperman who trashed John Adams during the 1800 presidential campaign as a “hideous hermaphroditical character” bent on crowning himself king, even our most genteel statesmen have gone negative when they thought they had to.
With Eliot Spitzer now neck and neck with Scott Stringer in the race for comptroller, and Bill de Blasio far ahead of his nearest two rivals — Chris Quinn and Bill Thompson — in the Democratic primary for mayor, New York’s election is about to take a sharp turn to the negative. On the whole, that would be a good thing.
We’re seeing it in the comptroller’s race, where Stringer has just sent a mailer whose cover shows a pair of hands outside prison bars. On the inside it reads: “Anyone else who committed Eliot Spitzer’s crimes would go to jail.”
We’re also seeing it in the Republican primary, where John Catsimatidis has aired negative television ads about Joe Lhota. This newspaper has endorsed Lhota in the GOP primary, and I happen to believe he remains the best candidate for mayor of either party. But the idea that Catsimatidis has sullied this race by going negative is ridiculous.
In new ads, Catsimatidis reminds people that Lhota called Port Authority police “mall cops.” He also blames Lhota, former chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, for “$15 bridge tolls” and the “highest subway fares ever” — and promises he “will never do that” as mayor.
Only in a knitting club for retired nuns could this be deemed beyond the pale. Yes, Lhota has already apologized for his crack about Port Authority cops. And the claim that a Mayor Catsimatidis would prevent toll increases is easily swatted down, given the mayor has little say in these decisions.
But that’s part of a robust back-and-forth essential for any election debate. What Catsimatidis has done is what all negative ads try to do: highlight issues an opponent would rather not bring up, weaknesses he’d rather hide and gaffes he’d rather us forget. It’s also why negative ads almost always offer more information than positive ads.
You see that in the newer ads Chris Quinn and Bill de Blasio have been putting up. In one called “A Tale of Two de Blasios” (playing off de Blasio’s theme of “Two New Yorks”), Quinn uses old footage that shows de Blasio arguing forcefully for things he now just as forcefully condemns. These include the lifting of term limits, member items for city councilmen and the city’s plan for taxis for the outer boroughs.
De Blasio is returning the favor. His videos show Quinn expressing strong support for Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, and cite her opposition to a new law that will allow people who believe they’ve been unfairly stopped by the cops to sue. De Blasio characterizes Quinn’s opposition to this bill as an unwillingness to end racial profiling.
Unfair? Probably. Out of context? Definitely. But so are positive ads, which are often as accurate as the online personal ad in which a 55-year-old man with a paunch advertises himself as “tall, dark and handsome.”
Negative ads also give targets an opportunity to turn them back on accusers. In the 2009 race for New Jersey governor, for example, incumbent Jon Corzine ran an ad that accused Chris Christie of “throwing his weight around.” Seconds later, the Republican is shown, in slow motion, getting out of a car with all the grace of a pregnant mastodon.
Instead of whining about unfairness, Christie went on Don Imus’ radio show. “Man up and say I’m fat,” he challenged the governor.
Suddenly Corzine found himself on the defensive. And when he lamely tried to say the ad was not about Christie’s weight, he lost all credibility. As Christie predicted, Election Day saw him emerge “the big fat winner.”
In a 2008 interview John Geer, author of “In Defense of Negativity,” explained why negative ads are necessary for democracy: “If we only listen to the candidates’ positive advertising, we would believe we have a choice among these perfect candidates who are going to balance all budgets, solve all educational problems, and end the problem of global warming within four years.”
It’s the negative ads that give us the other side.