Campaigns in Tune With an Old Medium

Doug Hillard, vice president and market manager for two stations that Clear Channel owns in Frederick, WFRE-FM (99.9) and WFMD (930 AM), described it as a "really good political season."

"We have lots of pieces running," he said.

For the candidates, radio is a bargain. A week's worth of television time in the D.C. media market costs about $1 million, while the equivalent on radio is about $100,000, media consultants say.

Sislen said the ads have been building on themselves. So when Republican Sen. George Allen took after Webb in a radio ad about the Democrat's opposition to admitting women at the U.S. Naval Academy, Webb fired back with his own radio ad, featuring women praising his leadership when he later was Navy secretary.

"It allows people to get on the air quick," Sislen said. "To counterpunch fast."

The two Virginia candidates have been trading blows over black voters, too.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee started by airing allegations about racial insensitivity against Allen to weaken his support among African Americans. One sharply worded ad airing on black stations in Norfolk lumps all of the accusations together.

"What do you get when you put a hangman's noose with opposition to the Martin Luther King holiday, combined with racial slurs and displaying the Confederate flag?" the announcer asks. "That's Senator George Allen."

Allen responded quickly with a radio spot on the same stations. In it, African American state Sen. Benjamin J. Lambert III (D-Richmond) defends the Republican.

"You've heard negative things about my friend George Allen, and I would like to set the record straight," Lambert says.

Allen has targeted the rural parts of the state with a radio ad that focuses on the proposed constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage and civil unions. Webb has said he opposes same-sex marriage but thinks that the amendment goes too far. The ad ignores that nuance, using Webb's own statements at debates in which he says he will vote against the amendment.

"How could Jim Webb accept something that cuts against the foundation of our values?" the female announcer asks. "Marriage is supposed to be a union between a man and a woman. But Jim Webb won't define it like that."

Democrats responded with a radio ad in the same markets that criticizes Allen for stock options he received from serving on corporate boards before becoming a senator. The ad closes with: "Those aren't Virginia values. Those are Washington, D.C., values."

Because radio ads lack the power of visual imagery, Fratrik said, the medium is often best used to reinforce the broad themes that have already been conveyed on television and in campaign literature.

This might explain, for instance, why Ehrlich launched a new radio ad this week featuring William H. Murphy Jr., a former judge who has previously been on the air to attack O'Malley's record on crime -- a theme of the governor's campaign.

Murphy repeats an accusation he made in a prior ad for the governor -- that O'Malley, in his bid to disperse drug trade by enforcing offenses such as loitering, had rounded up innocent African Americans.

"How can a black person with any degree of self-respect support a man who does this to us?" Murphy asks. "I can't."

It is no surprise that O'Malley's campaign already had its own ad up, criticizing Ehrlich for helping challenge the tax status of the NAACP. That one was airing on the very same stations.