Having the Last Laugh

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Oklahoma Democrat Jim Jones, campaigning for the Senate against Incumbent Republican Don Nickles, has discovered that less can be more. In his TV spots, the balding Jones tells voters, "I'll have more time each day to work on Oklahoma's problems because I won't need one of these." Grinning broadly, he raises a whirring -- and superfluous -- hair dryer to his head. The implication? That Nickles, thickly thatched and Hollywood handsome, is just another pretty face.

Government may be serious business, but the trend in political advertising this year is to make your point with a punch line. Candidates are taking to the airwaves with props and gimmicks to get their messages, and their names, across to a frequently indifferent public. In person and on television, New York's little-known Republican gubernatorial candidate Andrew O'Rourke is using a cardboard cutout of Democratic Governor Mario Cuomo to deride his popular opponent as "one-dimensional." South Dakota Congressman Tom Daschle, a populist Democrat hoping to unseat incumbent Senator James Abdnor, juxtaposes shots of long, gleaming limousines purring around Washington with , pictures of his own 1971 Pontiac wearily chugging toward the Senate Office Building.

A television advertisement for Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy demonstrates his affinity for his state's dairy-farming community by going directly to the source. The commercial shows the Senator, accompanied by two farmers, pasting Leahy bumper stickers on the sides of some contented cows. To make the point that Illinois Republican Governor James Thompson has broken a number of promises, Democrat Adlai Stevenson III, not normally known as a barrel of laughs, has been showcasing an ad that features a pair of legs doing a soft- shoe. The voice-over: "When it comes to song and dance, nobody's better than Jim Thompson."

Gone are the days when candidates would appear as talking heads to tout their credentials. "Political advertising is beginning to recognize that it competes with other advertising for people's attention, which means McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Buick and Crazy Eddie," says Manhattan Political Consultant Scott Miller. As broadcast political advertising becomes ubiquitous, many observers have begun to question its efficacy. Last week's New York primary, for example, was notable for the poor return on some heavily financed television advertising. To be effective, says Miller, candidates must "use the same methods and technologies that are available to everybody. Humor is part of that."

The resulting blend of politics and commercial advertising techniques can sometimes be startling. Democratic Senate Hopeful Wyche Fowler of Georgia satirizes the American Express commercials by strolling through a rack of clothes asking "Do you know me? I'm Congressman Wyche Fowler, and I think you are paying too much interest on bank credit cards." California's Republican Senate candidate Ed Zschau piggybacks on the popularity of Bartles & Jaymes cooler commercials by featuring two good ol' boys sitting on a front porch musing about the number of floor votes missed by Incumbent Democrat Alan Cranston. "Three hundred forty-seven of them," the ad tells us. Says one codger: "If a 16-year-old did that, he'd still be in the third grade."