Give Us Money, or Vote For Me!

Some political mailers I've received in the past few days. T-Minus 4 weeks until election day.
__________________________________________________________________

The following is for the 50th Congressional District seat that was vacated by corrupt Republican Duke Cunningham. Republican Brian Bilbray won the special election to assume the remainder of Duke's term and has since become the incumbent. Challenging him is former school board member Francine Busby.

Even though the Duke pleaded guilty to bribery and other damning (for a politician) criminal offense, and even though Bilbray was himself a lobbyist before he finished up the Duke's term, Francine Busby has found herself having difficulty gaining traction in this heavily Republican district. Even with the help of a gerrymandered Republican district, Brian Bilbray feels it necessary to play the xenophobe card. Busby gave Bilbray additional cannon fodder in the campaign with an inadvertant gaffe at a rally in which she "You don't need papers to vote" to a man asking about helping her campaign.

As you can see from the pro-Bilbray ads below, the thrust of the mail campaign seems to be focused on this incendiary issue:



It seems apparent that one of the HUGE advantages of incumbency is the ability to set the tone and content of the campaign. By focusing on illegal immigration, Bilbray has succeeded in refocusing the debate on probably the most inflammatory issue in the district. Some may see this as a surprise given the Navy Town reputation that San Diego holds (where's the War on Terror in this debate?)






*********************************************************************
This is for a bond measure for a local community college. The funny thing is, this college is prolly about 25 miles from my place, while another one, that I'm not able to vote on (different districts) is less than 3 miles from me.



**********************************************************************

Front and back of an Ah-Nold mailer. This is the "issues" mailer. As you can tell, this flyer attempts to empasize the Termination of taxes.




Front and back of the other Ah-Nold mailer. This is the "character" mailer. From the pictures, Angelides looks mousy and almost sly, like a fox. Ah-Nold seeks to come off as optimistic and hopeful. A friend literally laughed out loud when she saw the pictures on this one.




Note: The two Ah-Nold mailers arrived as two seperate pieces of mail on the same day. This was the first time I've been a recipient of this type of ad strategy. I generally feel that this is more effective, simply because it creates two pieces rather than one big fold-out. It also seems effective in simplifying the message, which as an incumbent, would seem advantageous for Ah-Nold to do.