Boyda: Election shows power of negativity / LJWorld.com

Archive for Tuesday, November 18, 2008

The Associated Press

November 18, 2008

U.S. Rep. Nancy Boyda says she tried to prove that she could win re-election to her 2nd District House seat without running attack ads against her opponent.

But instead, the defeated Democratic congresswoman says her race against Republican Lynn Jenkins showed the country that the easiest way to win an election is by saying lots of bad things about your opponent, even if they’re not true.

Jenkins, the Kansas state treasurer, beat Boyda 51 percent to 46 percent, which Boyda said demonstrated “beyond a shadow of a doubt” the capacity of negative campaigning to get votes.

“We will be the nationwide case history for why there has to be mudslinging, and the more the better,” Boyda told The Topeka Capital-Journal in her first extended interview since Election Day. “It has cemented that formula.”

But a Jenkins spokesman attributed the Republican’s victory to hard work on the campaign trail and a message of fiscal conservatism.

“We had a consistent message highlighting the strengths of what we believe was the better candidate, and clearly the voters agreed,” said Pat Leopold, Jenkins’ campaign manager.

But Boyda, who leaned on a series of folksy campaign ads and newspaper tabloids detailing her views on policy issues, said Jenkins was way behind in the polls before “they went negative, negative, negative.”

Boyda said she was targeted by radio and television ads and by automated telephone calls claiming, among other things, that she had pledged to raise five federal taxes, had voted for the largest tax increase in U.S. history, and that she was going to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits.

She said one ad even implied that she was anti-American, telling people to “Call Nancy Boyda and ask if she’s on the side of terrorists.”

None of those claims was true, Boyda said.

“The thing that makes me the saddest in this whole thing is that people knew that Lynn Jenkins wasn’t telling the truth,” Boyda said. “What this race has proven is that if you want to win, you need to tell a bunch of lies about your opponent over and over and over again and get as many third-party outside groups, from outside Kansas, to do the same thing.”

As for her campaign, Boyda turned down appeals by her own party to respond aggressively to Jenkins’ ads. She decided it would be inappropriate to attack Jenkins on missing meetings of the state retirement system board while the fund lost $1 billion, and she also declined to run ads questioning Jenkins about her role as treasurer in misallocation of fuel tax revenue to all 105 countries.

She said her campaign even knew of problems with Jenkins’ marriage, but didn’t bring it up. Jenkins’ husband filed for divorce three days after the election.

“I was really hoping we could show the country that we, in fact, could run a different kind of campaign,” Boyda said.

Discussion

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18 November 2008
at 12:28 p.m.

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consumer1 (Anonymous) says…

For what it is worth. I voted for Boyda. She was doing a great job. Now Jenkins will suck the life out of Ks.2 district.Oh, I can do attack ads. I am not running for anything.
18 November 2008
at 3:13 p.m.

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situveux1 (Anonymous) says…

Boo freakin' hoo. Voters can only handle so many lies.
20 November 2008
at 3:04 p.m.

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arieswarrior (Anonymous) says…

As her Party leader proved, there are relatively high-minded campaigns with nevertheless enough bite of realiity in them to keep the opposition in check, and then there are post-mortem boo-hoos against mudslingers who were allowed to run rampant over your own efforts to keep it clean. Nancy should have taken a page from the Obama campaign, who ran a completely negative ad for only one day about McCain's involvement in the Keating Five scandal to warn his badmen off from going further with the Bill Ayres nonesense or going back to the Rev. Wright episode of the primaries. But absolute moral purity, especially retrospective purity, will neither win elections nor popularity contests about the totality of human nature —much less jousts with evil rulers or judgments before an all-knowing God about your own personal past. Indeed, Nancy was and still is guilty of the greatest of all sins: total self-involvement and the constitutional inability to see it or to listen to anyone else's advice. She lived by her big, fat self, and she died — blaming everyone except herself — by her big, fat self. Rest in peace, Nancy, lonely as it is, there, all by yourself !!
20 November 2008
at 3:17 p.m.

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janeyb (Anonymous) says…

Nancy should have paid more attention to how her staff responded to emails from her constituents. If it wasn't a wild-eyed liberal subject they pretty much told a person to “kiss off”. I voted for Jenkins.
20 November 2008
at 3:52 p.m.

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rooster (Anonymous) says…

It is true that Nancy got what she deserved by being a weak politician. For all of her good deeds in congress she forgot that kansas is a red state and she needed to conform to the norm to continue to do her good deeds.