A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
For more on Vivek Ramaswamy's ad, we've called Jacob Neiheisel. He's an associate professor of political science at the University of Buffalo where he specializes in political communications and campaigns. Professor, did this ad cross a line?
JACOB NEIHEISEL: I think that's going to be up for the voters to decide, but it's certainly a very good example of a boomerang or a backlash effect, at least so far. We're seeing quite a bit of a reaction to it.
MARTÍNEZ: Now, Ramasamy's campaign produced the ad, as we just heard, but say it had been a political action committee that wants him to be governor, would that have shielded him from the heat that it's getting?
NEIHEISEL: It's quite possible. There is some research out there suggesting that, you know, PAC advertising that's overly negative but in support of a campaign can let a campaign get away with this kind of ad. And of course, one of the salient examples we have of a truly nasty ad being injected into a race is the Willie Horton ad. And even though that was something that was closely tied to the campaign, it wasn't actually run by the campaign itself.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. And I also think of Michael Dukakis' ad when he was on a tank, and his helmet was ill fitting. That - now, that was a kind of a funny ad that wound up hurting him, but this one is definitely a lot more serious. I mean, what do you think? What are some lessons that need to be learned from an ad like this?
NEIHEISEL: I think it really does suggest that if you're going to do this, it's best if somebody else be making the blows themselves. I think that that's a good lesson here. And I also think that, you know, it's really difficult to tell what the effect of this is going to be because you don't run this type of ad if you're doing well. You don't go this direction if things are looking good for your campaign. It truly is something of a Hail Mary. And so I think it's really just kind of solidifying a trend that we've seen in the polls already.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. And what about the timing of this? I mean, if you're going to run an ad like this, I mean, does it - should it be a lot earlier so that if it backfires, you have time to try and recover and maybe figure out something else?
NEIHEISEL: Yeah. That's a great question. I mean, we think that the timing of advertising when it hits is really quite important. Really, voters only are paying attention sort of the last two weeks of the campaign. I know it sounds strange to folks like us, but that's kind of their bandwidth for these types of things. And so if it's going to get in there and it's going to be something that affects the campaign, it's really going to be about now. So I'm not sure if running it earlier would've helped, but it certainly would've given it some distance if it did go wrong.
MARTÍNEZ: Mentioned how you're a, you know, associate political science professor that specializes in political communications and campaigns. So, Professor, what makes a good campaign ad?
NEIHEISEL: That's a fantastic question. And the answer that we have is, there's nothing that forever and always is something you should put in a political ad. Campaigns are a conversation, and it needs to be part of that conversation. And so we have a lot of research suggesting that it really depends. You know, there's no one magic thing that has to go in an ad. It depends on what the campaign is like and what the voters are demanding.
MARTÍNEZ: So if a candidate wins the campaign, is it fair to say that all the ads were good ones because it got the candidate where the candidate wanted to go?
NEIHEISEL: Oh, we're really tempted to say that. You know, ideally, we'd have access to things like the focus groups and the internal polls that the campaigns are doing to say that with some authority. But, yeah, we - it's hard to say, kind of, given how many they air and the overall tonnage that gets out there.
MARTÍNEZ: Jacob Neiheisel is an associate political science professor at the University of Buffalo. Professor, thank you very much for your thoughts on this.
NEIHEISEL: My pleasure. Thank you.
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