Wowee wow, the political ads are getting strange.
Steve Poizner, desperate to find some kind of traction in the final weeks of the GOP primary campaign, has released a new attack on Meg Whitman that continues in a long line of weird Republican animal flicks. It’s not quite as odd as Carly Fiorina’s demon sheep, but still: There are vultures flying around, vulture squawks in the background, and at one point, a vulture lands on the ground and starts chowing on some carrion.
But there’s a serious point here, too. The ad attacks Whitman for her ties to Goldman Sachs, and points out that she was making big money on dubious insider stock deals just as the rest of the nation’s economy was going to hell. ANd if Poizner thinks this will play with conservative voters, imagine what the Democrats will be able to do with it in the fall.
Then there’s Gavin Newsom’s ad, which starts out reminding us all that his state of the city speech was seven hours long (this is something we want to remember?) then lists all the great accomplishments he’s taking credit for, even though none of them were his initiatives. He talks about San Francisco having the best urban school district in California (although the mayor has no control at all over the schools, and the main reason the district’s finances aren’t worse is because of the Rainy Day Fund, a project of Tom Ammiano). He talks about paid sick leave (which came from the Board of Supervisors, not the mayor’s office) and universal health care (which was sponsored by Ammiano, not Newsom).
Then the ad winds up with Newsom walking back to his office and finding that Willie Brown is sitting in his chair. That, I guess, is a joke — but it only serves to remind viewers that (1) Newsom owes his political life to Brown, one of the most corrupt mayors in San Francisco history and (2) if Newsom wins, he’ll be leaving office early, allowing the supervisors to vote in a new mayor.
Did Gavin’s people even make this ad?