Here’s The “Take The Money” Ad

As we first reported last week, a new TV ad is hitting select airwaves in South Carolina today imploring Gov. Mark Sanford to “take the money,” or to apply for a controversial $740 million pot of federal bureaucratic bailout funds.

Sanford has proposed using that money to pay down debt, an argument that doesn’t seem to have gained much traction publicly.

We would have advised him to use it on a tax cut, but that’s just us.

Anyway, the new ad – paid for by a group calling itself the S.C. Taxpayers’ Alliance – says that “we’re facing a crisis in South Carolina – our jobs, our homes, our savings, our future is in doubt.”

“The recession has already forced state government to cut over $1 billion,” the ad continues. “We need it, to keep prisoners behind bars, to educate our children and to prevent teachers from being fired. And yet Governor Sanford is on TV, promoting himself.”

As we’ve noted on several occasions in the past, we’ve got some issues with those claims, but the pop on Sanford is hard to criticize.

The governor is using this debate to enhance his national profile, which makes it easy for his opponents to level this line of attack.

And frankly, this ad does so in a very understated, very effective way – by simply asking the governor to “change his mind.”

Spoken by an attractive female narrator (think Rachel McAdams twenty years from now) and laced with snippets from other “just folks,” the ad is a 180-degree departure from Sanford’s spot earlier this month, which featured the governor in a coat-and-tie in front of a neatly-framed oil painting in the Governor’s mansion.

And just as Sanford’s ad was precisely what we would not have run to advance his position, this ad is precisely what we would have run to come after him.

How so?

Well, it’s regular people saying incredibly easy-to-understand (if not entirely accurate) things – whereas the governor’s position is much more convoluted.

The production value of the ad is also better than Sanford’s – which doesn’t happen often, for those of you familiar with the governor’s history of producing solid TV ads.

We attribute that to the role of our “web nemesis,” Bob McAlister, who despite having one foot in the grave seems to have squeezed off a nice round here.

What’s also interesting is that McAlister has partnered with Richard Quinn and Associates on this project, forming a new agency for the purposes of managing the ad buy – which we are told will be a six-figure run.

“McAlister, Quinn & Associates” is the name of the new agency, and The Palmetto Scoop’s Adam Fogle is serving as the organization’s Chairman.

Comments