In this last week before the election, it’s hard to miss the deluge of negative TV and radio ads, but there are also more subtle communications: fliers in the mail, robo calls and negative literature dropped on porches. Leaders of both parties at the State House in Augusta say they’re worried about the effect such messaging will have on legislative races.
Nobody likes the proliferation of negative ads. Senate Republican Leader Garret Mason of Lisbon Falls says it has gotten worse since he was first elected in 2010. While attending various national conferences, he says he was horrified to hear about the negative campaign tactics being used by both parties in other state legislative races.
“People always told he about the nasty things that had happened in their state and I used to be able to say, ‘Oh no, that doesn’t happen in Maine.’ But unfortunately, that has changed a lot over the years,” he says. “I think that’s the influence of the national parties. If you look at the national race, that has gotten incredibly nasty. Not just politically, but personally.”
Mason says there is no doubt in his mind that some close state Senate races will be decided next week by negative tactics that distort records or the positions of candidates. He says he wishes that voter decisions would instead be based on the positions that candidates take on issues.
Leaders on the Democratic side say they feel the same way.
“People hate the negativity and yet it still actually seeps into their subconscious and it does make a difference on how they perceive a candidate and how they vote,” says Freeport Rep. Sara Gideon, a Democrat who serves as assistant House majority leader.
Gideon says that even in House races, where lawmakers only represent about 9,000 people, the negative attack ads will likely affect more than one contest this year.
House Minority Leader Ken Fredette, a Newport Republican, also blames the harsh political rhetoric coming out of Washington from both parties for the nasty state of politics in Maine.
“We have gotten to the point now where you can’t have a reasonable policy disagreement but then turns into some personal attack because you voted a certain way on an issue,” he says. “That’s the kind of stuff we have to deal with today.”
Retiring Senate Minority Leader Justin Alfond of Portland, a Democrat who also served a term as Senate president, says negative ads have been around for a long time because they work, even though voters insist that they don’t like them.
Colby College government professor Tony Corrado says studies have shown that people tend to remember negative messages more than positive messages.
“People tend to remember little points or items from a negative ad much more than they tend to remember the positive ad, so they tend to stick with you,” he says.
Legislative races can be determined by a margin of just a handful of votes, and Corrado says if a negative ad can affect just one or two percent of the voters, that could determine the outcome of a close race.
He says when voters see a negative ad or get a flier in the mail, they should take the time to assess whether the claims are accurate before deciding how to vote.
