Negative Ads

DES MOINES -- Sen. Bob Dole grabbed the first major prize of the Republican presidential contest by a less than impressive margin last night, narrowly edging out a surging Patrick J. Buchanan in the Iowa precinct caucuses.Former Gov. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee ran third and magazine publisher Steve Forbes a distant fourth. Voter turnout was unusually low, the result of a relentlessly negative campaign that turned off many voters, Republican leaders said.Mr. Dole's victory was far from overpowering in a state where he is extremely well known, renewing doubts about the strength of his candidacy.

MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa -- Eating a pork tenderloin sandwich the size of a catcher's mitt, Chad Binder is puzzled by an apparent contradiction in Marshall County's reaction to the Republican presidential campaign.He says there has been enough activity so there should be a big turnout at the caucuses Monday night. But, he adds, "A lot of people here have been turned off by the negativity of the campaign."All the candidates have passed through this community of 26,000 an hour's drive northeast of Des Moines, a town typical of those the campaigns have been targeting for weeks.

Elections would be such a bore if it weren't for the negative ads.A medical prof diagnoses E. A. Poe's terminal illness as rabies, which is a blow to supporters of DTs, overdose, madness, AIDS and other currently more fashionable complaints.There is nothing stealthy about stealth bombers' bombs. You know when they hit.At least it is starting to feel like football weather, almost.Pub Date: 9/16/96

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- During the Iowa caucuses, when free-spending Steve Forbes was bombarding Sen. Bob Dole with negative television ads, Mr. Dole wise-cracked at one point that ''I've seen so many of those negative ads that I'm thinking of not voting for myself.''It was a funny one-liner, but apparently a lot of Iowa Republicans not only thought the same but really did not vote for him. His disappointing 26 percent of the vote in narrowly besting Pat Buchanan's 23 percent was accompanied by an equally disappointing turnout -- about 96,000 voters, far short of the 135,000 predicted by Iowa state party chairman Brian Kennedy.

AS THE first negative ads of this year's gubernatorial race hit the airwaves, voters might want to remember a quip from the eloquent Adlai Stevenson, who twice won the Democratic presidential nomination and twice lost to Dwight Eisenhower:"A lie is an abomination unto the Lord and a very present help in trouble."* * *TELEVISION talk show host Phil Donahue's campaign to broadcast an execution on his program has not gone unnoticed by David Letterman's writers.A sampling of the Donahue-execution jokes heard recently on the Letterman show follows:* "To give you an idea of how oppressively hot and humid it was in New York City yesterday, guys were showing up at the 'Donahue' show asking to be executed."

Republican Wayne T. Gilchrest overcame negative ads, the state's political establishment and a high-powered money machine to defeat Democrat Tom McMillen last night in the bitterly fought race to represent Maryland's sprawling 1st Congressional District.It was one of just five contests nationally in which two incumbents were vying for a single seat.Meanwhile, Republican candidate Roscoe Bartlett defied conventional political wisdom by defeating Democrat Thomas H. Hattery, a state delegate, in the hard-hitting battle to succeed Beverly B. Byron in Western Maryland's 6th Congressional District.

When former (and, he hopes, future) Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. gave one of his semi-annual guest lectures to Towson University Professor Richard Vatz's political rhetoric class on Thursday, he skipped the campaigning and instead served up lessons for the students on how to cut through political spin. It is advice voters would be well advised to take and apply to the candidates in this election — him included. •Themes. Campaign themes, Mr. Ehrlich said, are shorthand ways for people to identify with candidates without getting bogged down in the specifics.

In addition to the relentless onslaught of mostly negative ads from the Romney and Obama campaigns and their affiliated super PACs, the good people of Ohio are finding themselves targeted by a right-wing conspiracy maven who is dispensing a DVD that pushes beyond the birthers into a new level of paranoid fantasy. "Dreams From My Real Father" is being sent to a million Ohio voters. The DVD makes the claim that, rather than being the son of a student from Kenya, the president was sired by a communist from Chicago named Frank Marshall Davis.

PHOENIX -- In his victory speech here the other night, Steve Forbes in his brand of graciousness attacked his opponents for using taxpayers' money to run for president. He was the only true independent, he boasted, because he wasn't taking a cent from Uncle Sam and was getting all his campaign money out of his own pocket, plus some from friends -- what he no doubt would consider pocket change.Although it's only the beginning of March, Mr. Forbes has already retired the chutzpah award for the year, hands down.

LANSING, Mich. -- A television commercial for state Senate Majority Leader John Engler, seeking to unseat two-term Democratic Gov. James Blanchard, shows Engler shaking voters' hands as the voice-over says: "Across Michigan, he campaigns for change." A man Engler greets is heard to say: "Yeah, you betcha, I'm tired of Blanchard."That in a nutshell is the pitch Engler is using against Blanchard, who weathered early political storms and then won overwhelming re-election four years ago. It is geared to capitalize on what Blanchard's own campaign manager, Gary Bachula, acknowledges is "an anti-incumbent mood" across the country, with state governors a particular target.