Using some unconventional techniques from King Roy the rat to Playboy bunnies, these politicians try to persuade viewers to vote for them. Click on the thumbnails to view videos.
The words “Purity”, “Piety” and “True Believers” hover above a scrubby hillside. Sheep spring about and munch on virgin prairie. Last week, the campaign for California Senate hopeful Carly Fiorina released this hard-hitting attack ad, targeting her Republican primary competitor, US Rep. Tom Campbell. Every election cycle the campaign cocktail of overworked staffers, wonky brains and millions of dollars in funding somehow creates a few of these cinematic Molotovs. They explode indiscriminately, burning the aggressor as often as the target.
A former CEO of Hewlett Packard and economic adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Fiorina attempts to pin the label “FCINO” (Fiscal Conservative in Name Only) on Campbell. In the two minutes before she makes her point, she manages to work in a Doric column, empyrean lightning, demon mutton and a passel of pigs.
Amazingly, America has seen much worse. Here are some of the most inept, funny political ads from the past decade. We are the world and we disapprove of these messages.
New Orleans mayoral candidate James Perry’s profuse profanity and edgy iMovie effects apparently didn’t get the 16 and under target audience to the polls. He lost the race last week to Mitch Landrieu, garnering only 3% of votes.
Spoiler: Reesey lost her 2008 bid for the Democratic nomination for Fort Lauderdale Supervisor of Elections. But you’ll be happy to know she dried off and took her green screen all the way to the city review board, where she serves to this very day.
If you make it to the end of this bizarre Flash adventure, you’ll hear the narrator ask what it stronger than an ox. A snake? A mongoose? A puppy? Certainly not King Roy the Rat, an animorphed Roy Barnes, the leading Democratic candidate in Georgia’s gubernatorial race.
Did you know District Coroner is an elected position? Join the team. Dr. Dwight McKenna brought a national spotlight on an otherwise unremarkable race for the 2010 New Orleans Coroner position by implying his opponent, Dr. Frank Minyard, was in fact harvesting and selling organs.
Tennessee Republican Senate candidate Ed Bryant released this mudsling in 2006. You wouldn’t know, because neither Bryant nor his message is anywhere to be found. Instead, there’s just a deeply dysfunctional mother-son relationship, one rife with ignored questions and aborted make-out moments.
Democrat Cruz Bustamante ran for California Insurance Commissioner in 2006. He used to be really fat. You want to make something of it? Bustamante (Spanish for "exploding gut") won with 70.5% of the vote.
First, the Playboy bunny looks 30 years too old for her supposed haunt, and second, is she wearing clothes? Third, I’m guessing the guy who jumped out of the brush in camouflage does have too many guns. Finally, Ford Jr. lost his 2006 Tennessee Senate campaign by 3 points, and many attribute the loss to this ad.
Republican Carl Mumpower ran for Congress in North Carolina’s 11th district. He is also legally blind. Or maybe he isn’t.
If Mumpower's blind, Benson may be mute. She ran unsuccessfully for the 2008 Democratic nomination for the open Alaska Senate seat. It wasn’t about where the race ended, though, but the journey traveled.
If you don’t understand this video, you are an idiot. Useful context: Mike Gravel was a 2008 Presidential candidate and former Democratic Senator from Alaska. He complained to MSNBC about the inability of “people older than 30” to understand the ad, before confessing his own confusion during the shoot.
