Barack Obama carried California’s 24th Congressional District, which is located in Santa Barbara, by a 54-43 margin, and until recently, national party groups hadn’t shown much interest in the general election between Democrat Salud Carbajal and Republican Justin Fareed. However, that’s now changed: House Majority PAC has launched a $328,000 buy against Fareed, and the Los Angeles Times reports that the NRCC has reserved $669,000 from late September to Election Day.
That’s not good news for Democrats, who are trying to hold this open seat and would have preferred not to have to spend outside money here. But at least Donald Trump offers Team Blue a ready-made line of attack, and that’s exactly the approach HMP is taking with their new TV ad. In theory, it’s a tactic that ought to work: This seat has a median income level a bit above the national average as well as a higher proportion of college graduates, so this shouldn’t be Trump territory.
However, what should be a good message is simply conveyed very badly. The narrator, who is doing his best (or worst) Trump impersonation, argues that Trump “wants to punish women who seek an abortion, and Justin Fareed supports him.” It’s not just that the ad’s frenetic visuals are distracting, or that the grating Trump impression will have you flying across the room to hit your “mute” button. The main problem is that there’s absolutely no reason that the spot couldn’t use the actual clip of Trump himself proclaiming that “[t]here has to be some form of punishment” for women who receive abortions.
Indeed, a recent spot from EMILY’s List and Planned Parenthood in the New Hampshire Senate race did just that. It’s always much more devastating to use the candidate’s own words rather than have someone else summarize them for the audience. HMP’s allies at the DCCC understand that, and they recently launched several ads using clips of Trump doing offensive things like mocking a disabled reporter and exclaiming, “I like people who weren’t captured,” as well as recklessly talking about using nuclear weapons.
In fact, HMP’s decision to use game-show music, fireworks, and a Trump impersonator really just trivializes what should be an absolutely terrifying message. It doesn’t help that Fake Trump doesn’t actually provide any instances of Fareed agreeing with or endorsing Real Trump. HMP has the right idea here, but the execution is very off.
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And delivering the right message has posed something of a problem for Carbajal, too. Carbajal was recently overheard calling the city of Lompoc the “armpit” of Santa Barbara County. Carbajal’s campaign apologized “for the off-hand remark,” and for good reason. It’s never a good idea to go around dismissing whole areas of your constituency, as another California politician, former Rep. Mary Bono Mack, learned the hard way in 2012 when an old email resurfaced where she told a radio host that his description of the city of Coachella as a “Third World Toilet” was “unbelievably great!!!” Bono Mack lost re-election that fall.