My disease has progressed to the point where I enjoy political advertising. Some of it, anyway. Here in Minnesota there are no redeeming representatives of the genre, despite hot races in four of the state's eight congressional districts--two in suburban districts, the second and the third, where DFL challengers appear poised to defeat Republican incumbents, and two in mainly rural districts, the first and the eighth, both carried easily by Trump, where Republicans are favored to win open seats after the DFL incumbent retired. If you live in the Twin Cities and watch TV, you've seen the ads, constantly, sometimes the same one twice in the same commercial interlude. I can only imagine what it must be like if you live in Mankato, or Hibbing, where it costs less to buy a spot and all the viewers can vote in your race. The ads run the gamut from petty and insipid to the frankly emetic. Uff-duh.
But, lest you think they're all that bad, I'm attaching a few counterexamples. The one at the top, called "Women Rising," (pretty sure Springsteen was happy to grant permission for the sound track) is a kind of group portrait of eight Democratic women, all first time candidates, all running for seats currently held by Republicans. Their answers to the question about why run for office are spliced together, the common thread being that it's a natural step after their work experience in the military (for example, flying combat missions in Iraq) or government service (for example, CIA Mideast analyst).
The two clips below are individual ads for candidates featured in "Women Rising." One, Amy McGrath, a former Air Force fighter pilot, is running against Republican Andy Barr in Kentucky. The other, M.J. Hegar, author of an Afghan war memoir called Shoot Like a Girl, is running against Republican incumbent John Carter in Texas. Both are underdogs in deep red districts. The Cook Political Report currently rates Hegar's race "Lean Republican," and McGrath's as a "Toss Up."
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