Democrat Scott Colom did the seemingly impossible, winning a U.S. Senate seat in deep south Mississippi. He will be Mississippi’s first Black American senator in nearly 150 years, dating back to Reconstruction.
Colom crowned his victory with a joyous late-night celebration, giving thanks to a host of people who helped. He saved some credit for a late-appearing TV ad. Pundits have called the 28-second spot “one of the greatest political ads of all time.”
Patrick Gaspard, a former Obama adviser, suggested the core idea. Gaspard picked up on a gaffe by incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who dismissed concern over beef prices saying Mississippians had “many proteins” to choose from.
Ryan Sayles created the ad, and Russ Hudson starred as actor/narrator. Hudson stands at a grill, delivering a line of Southern drawl: “Pick another protein? Sheee-itt! I’d rather pick another senator.” The ad went instantly viral.
Political ads that stand out and capture voters’ attention are as American as – well – apple pie and baseball. Ads and riffs have changed history from the republic’s earliest days – think of “Tippecanoe and Tyler too.” The tune hatched for the 1840 presidential campaign elected William Henry Harrison, who fought in the Tippecanoe battle. Vice President John Tyler succeeded President Harrison when he succumbed a month later to pneumonia contracted during his long-winded acceptance speech.
History records more recent political ad successes with a 1952 TV commercial paid for by Citizens for Eisenhower, showing a parade of cartoon characters carrying posters and singing, “You like Ike, I like Ike, Everybody likes Ike.” The catchy tune helped the war-time hero defeat his opponent Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson.
Even more forceful was Lyndon Baines Johnson’s 1964 Daisy ad. A three-year-old girl was shown plucking petals from a daisy and then is obscured by angry mushroom clouds. LBJ achieved a landslide victory over Sen. Barry Goldwater, who had rattled sabers insisting that “extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.”
In 1984, it was Ronald Reagan who won a second term, defeating former vice president Walter Mondale. Reagan used the national mood and his tough Soviet stance to declare “It’s Morning in America.”
George H. W. Bush succeeded with his “Willie Horton ad” in 1988. Bush contrasted his support for the death penalty with Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis’ stance allowing a convicted killer to have a weekend pass. When freed Willie Horton stabbed a man and repeatedly raped his girlfriend.
Negative political ads often are used to disparage rivals. In 2004, George W. Bush was helped to a second term by ads that accused his opponent, decorated war hero John Kerry, of lying about his Vietnam War service and flipflopping on the Iraq War. A group calling themselves Swift Boat Veterans for Truth pictured Sen. Kerry windsurfing, implying he sailed whichever way the wind was blowing. The dishonest ads gave us a new word; pejorative ads are known as “swiftboating.”
In America’s past, political ads have steered campaigns, but Scott Colom’s brilliant pick-another-senator ad injected an entirely different element into political advertising. Rather than build up a candidate or disparage a rival, the brief spot managed to inject humor into the campaign and leave us wondering: Do laughs translate into votes?
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