Minnick Pulls TV, Radio Ads He Says Voters Are Sick Of Negative Campaign, Challenges Craig To Drop His

U.S. Senate candidate Walt Minnick on Thursday pulled all his television and radio ads, saying Idahoans are tired of the negative campaign between him and Sen. Larry Craig.

Minnick said he won’t advertise until he can replace all his ads with new ones that focus strictly on positive messages about himself. He called on Craig to follow suit, but said he’ll make the change regardless.

“I will not be criticizing Sen. Craig or his record,” Minnick said. “I might say that this is against the unanimous advice of my professional staff,” he said. “It’s a quarter of a million dollar decision.”

That includes scrapping $50,000 of his own advertising and $200,000 in anti-Craig advertising that the Idaho Democratic Party was preparing to run.

Minnick, a Boise businessman who has been waging a heated campaign against the longtime congressman and senator, said he doesn’t care if the tactic costs him the election.

“I have decided that the Idahoans I have met who are angry about negative commercials are right,” Minnick said. “I expect to live and work in this state,” he said. “I want to be able to walk down the streets of Coeur d’Alene and have people believe that I’m a person of integrity.”

Craig, who was on a campaign bus tour of Idaho’s 2nd Congressional District, could not immediately be reached for comment. His campaign spokesman, Mike Tracy, said, “It’s about time he (Minnick) decided to clean up his act.”

“We don’t think our ads are negative,” Tracy added.”We think they’re very factual.”

The Craig campaign will wait to see what Minnick does before deciding whether to make any changes in its own tactics. “We want to make sure that Walt’s really sincere about this,” Tracy said. He questioned whether other groups would continue to run ads attacking Craig, even after Minnick pulls his.

Minnick says he will make sure that whether it’s by mail, radio or TV, everybody is playing from a positive script. He has asked the Idaho Democratic Party to kill any advertising that criticizes Craig. The party, by law, cannot run any ads touting Minnick.

It may take a few days to pull the ads from smaller radio stations and there’s nothing to be done about pieces already in the mail. Still, “as far as I’m concerned, I am determined there won’t be any more negative campaigning” on behalf of Walt Minnick, he said.

Bill Mauk, party chairman, confirmed Thursday that the party is following Minnick’s wishes.

Minnick’s new commercials will focus on his positions on the issues. And in order to give the voters more information and less mudslinging, Minnick said he also is challenging Craig to three additional debates around the state.

The two have debated only once, in a Boise debate televised statewide on Idaho Public Television. One more Boise debate is scheduled for Oct. 29. Craig has refused repeated invitations to debate in North Idaho.

In a prepared statement issued late Thursday, Craig hailed Minnick’s decision to pull the ads and said “Idahoans deserve a thorough debate of the issues.” Yet Craig is refusing additional debates with Minnick, saying his schedule is too tight.

Minnick’s decision was made late Wednesday night after an encounter with a man at a bowling alley. People there told him they were fed up with the nasty campaign and didn’t care which side started it or which side was right, “they just want it stopped.”

“A candidate for the U.S. Senate, just like a U.S. senator, has an obligation to listen to the people of Idaho,” Minnick said.

The campaign has grown increasingly nasty in recent weeks, as a Minnick ad branded Craig “Lyin’ Larry Craig” and a Craig ad used a snippet of video of Minnick to imply, falsely, that Minnick advocates leaving nuclear waste in Idaho forever. Political scientists agree both Craig and Minnick have been going full-throttle on the negative track.

Craig’s claiming otherwise indicates “either he’s not listening to his own advertising or he doesn’t know it when he hears it,” said Florence Heffron of the University of Idaho.

Political experts, however, are divided as to whether negative advertising helps or hurts a challenger.

“People remember negative ads, but it’s not at all apparent that they are successful at getting people to vote one way or another,” Heffron said.

James Weatherby, a political scientist at Boise State University believes negative ads can help a challenger. He also argues that negative advertising drives the undecided voters to stay at home.

“National studies indicate some campaigns set out to do that very thing,” Weatherby said.

Switching to positive ads can only help Minnick, who has consistently trailed in the polls by a wide margin. “We have learned it is possible to pick up some votes by changing from negative to positive campaign strategies as Ron Wyden did in winning the Senate seat in the special election in Oregon this spring,” Weatherby said.

Poll numbers indicate nothing else is working for Minnick. But he’s been the first candidate in Craig’s long career to match the incumbent’s formidable fund-raising power, in part because he’s been able to pour more than $300,000 of his own money into his campaign.

Each side is well over $1 million mark in its campaign spending.

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