Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Thank God! No Bills.....
So I forgot to check my mail on Saturday(it happens) as I was too busy crying in my beer over the Longhorns loss. Checking the mailbox on Monday after work, I expected to be faced with bills and Valpak coupons. What I got instead both baffled me and angered me. Not one, not two, not three, but four paid advertisements by a political candidate, the same political candidate. Now this guy must think I have the world's shortest attention span or he has the biggest print ad budget in history. The ads didn't work because I can't remember who he was, but I found myself thinking" do we really need four mailouts in 2 days for a county commissioner's election?" My response to myself was: "welcome to Texas Politics". I am a registered voter and consider myself fairly competent when it comes to the issues, but I don't need to see 10 political ads while I'm watching football on the weekend. The most contentious race in my neck of the woods(Round Rock) is between incumbent Democrat Diana Maldonado and challenger Republican Larry Gonzales. This race has gotten nasty with Gonzales calling Rep. Maldonado "no show" because of an apparently poor voting attendance rate since her election. For her part, Diana M. has claimed Gonazles has been untruthful and has shortcomings of his own. With that being said, can they please duke it out somewhere other than my mailbox and television? Republicans are expected to do well nationwide, and that includes here in Texas where many of the Democrats that rode Obama's coattails to victory in 2008 will be out of a job come Wednesday next week. Geez, maybe bills aren't that bad....
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Classmate Tex Is published a great blog about the over abundance of paid political ads that popped up this campaign season. I too, as a voter in Texas was annoyed at the amount of ads that I received in the mail and had to cringe every time an ad aired on TV while I was trying to watch the 6 o'clock news. Tex Is brought up probably the most important point that candidates need to learn: the ads don't work! He said after receiving the ads he couldn't remember who sent them, and probably the rest of the population who were sent the ads couldn't remember the candidates name as well. Unless, of course, they were already voting for that person. Many candidates choose to run ads that don't paint their competitor in a good light, but how effective are they? I would hope that most people who are still undecided as to who they are going to vote for research their candidate and don't make decisions based on the most often inaccurate claims made in the paid advertisements.
ReplyDeleteI also have to agree on his second point, candidates need to find a better arena than our mailboxes and televisions to duke it out. The only thing I look for when I have to painfully watch an ad on television is who paid for the ad, that way I can figure out how badly that person skewed the truth in order to make the other candidate look bad. There are other more effective ways to campaign than to annoying the voter population, and after this election season I have to agree that I would rather receive bills in the mail than multiple political advertisements.