Campaigns in Tune With an Old Medium

By Matthew Mosk and Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, November 6, 2006

There's no question who was meant to hear the commercial that hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons cut for Republican Senate candidate Michael S. Steele.

"Michael Steele knows the issues that affect us because he comes from our struggle," Simmons says. "For too long, our voice has been ignored in Washington. Michael Steele could change that."

So how did Steele's campaign team know Simmons's message would reach an African American audience? They placed the ad on the radio.

"Politicians are using radio because it's a very focused, niche-programming medium," said Mark Fratrik, a radio analyst and vice president of Chantilly-based BIA Financial Network Inc. "These campaigns have specific messages for specific groups: soccer moms, NASCAR dads, African Americans. They gain that flexibility."

It may be the dowdy, older cousin of the slick, 30-second television spot, but the radio ad has become a second front for the hotly contested political campaigns in Maryland and Virginia this year.

Candidates in both states have turned to radio to sharpen their attacks on issues of race, on matters important to women and, increasingly this week, to help them spur turnout among key constituencies.

There was the rural Virginia radio ad going after Senate candidate James Webb (D) for failing to support a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. The voice of a former Maryland teacher of the year surfaced on pop radio stations to defend the record of gubernatorial candidate Martin O'Malley (D) on education.

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich (R) turned to rural markets to accuse O'Malley of raising taxes and coddling illegal immigrants and to urban radio to accuse the Baltimore mayor of sanctioning mass arrests of black men.

Democrat Benjamin L. Cardin has saturated key stations with the voices of black leaders, including Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who praises Cardin for lending early support for a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and for appointing the state legislature's first African American committee chairman.

"I've been around long enough to know when someone is really fighting for us ," Lewis declares.

Charlie Sislen, a radio industry analyst and partner at Annapolis-based Research Director Inc., said that it's too early to say just how much is being spent on radio this season but that it's a lot.

"It has been that way across the country," Sislen said. "It's hot and heavy."

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.