"We've struck gold in the Black Hills!" crowed Bob Kerrey after winning last week's South Dakota primary. The political payoff was slight: the Nebraska Democrat bagged only seven delegates. More important, his victory, with an impressive 40% of the vote, attracted contributions to his impoverished organization. But the money was not enough to allow Kerrey to take to other states the aggressive TV campaign he mounted in South Dakota. For three precious days, he was an unwilling pacifist in a political air war marked by sharply rising bitterness and intensity. The number of negative ads began to increase in proportion to the failure of most of the candidates to build winning streaks with positive messages.
As the primary competition in both parties quickens, the importance of broadcast advertising escalates. Democrats face contests in 22 states this week and next. This brutal pace precludes extended personal campaigning in any one state, forcing candidates to adapt their strategies to how much they can advertise and how much free exposure they can get.
As Senators from neighboring farm states, Kerrey and Iowa's Tom Harkin had the most at stake in South Dakota. Because air time there is cheap, both were able to bombard South Dakotans with pro-agriculture messages. Kerrey attacked the two leading Democrats, Bill Clinton and Paul Tsongas, as insensitive to / farmers' problems. He gave Harkin a bye, partly because Kerrey hopes to inherit the Iowan's supporters if Harkin drops out. That may not take long: after Harkin placed second with 25%, he lacked funds to advertise anywhere. He had to back away from larger primaries and concentrate on this week's caucus states, such as Minnesota and Washington.
While his advisers drew a new battle plan for the fortnight after South Dakota, Kerrey went south to deliver what an aide called "a real hit" on Clinton, the favorite in the Georgia primary scheduled for this week. A Medal of Honor winner who lost part of a leg in Vietnam, Kerrey berated his rival for failing to be candid about how he avoided military service. That makes Clinton unelectable in November, Kerrey insisted. In an awkward affectation of Southern folksiness, the Nebraskan predicted Clinton would "get opened up like a boiled peanut" by the Republican President. But Clinton barked right back, accusing Kerrey of using "the disgraceful divide-and-conquer tactics for which George Bush became famous in 1988."
The assault by Kerrey violated earlier promises to let the issue lie. But his camp thought it had to shake the chessboard. Kerrey has virtually no chance of winning Georgia or any of the large states up for grabs next week, including Texas and Florida. So his ploy is to drive down Clinton's numbers while pursuing a "delegate accrual" strategy -- targeting specific districts in the hope of picking up small blocs of delegates in many states. He also looks west, striving for a base that will keep him in the contest until the final primaries in June. When Kerrey did begin advertising again at week's end, it was with a biographical spot in Colorado, his best prospect in the contests this week. By stressing his background as war hero, successful businessman and citizen-politician, it aims to prove Kerrey has the drive to keep his promises. Then the candidate followed up with an ad challenging Clinton's and Tsongas's environmental credentials.