Five eye-catching ads from the Georgia special election
The special election to take Georgia’s 6th Congressional District has taken center stage as Democrats scramble to flip the red seat and turn a victory into a referendum on President Trump.
While Tuesday’s special election is dominating the discussion in Washington, it’s also ubiquitous on Georgia television, where almost $14 million in television ads have blanketed the airwaves, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Democratic frontrunner Jon Ossoff’s campaign has taken a more conventional route with its ads—either positive spots, issue ads or salvos at Trump.
But the crowded Republican side of the race has seen more hijinks, with 11 candidates locked in a struggle to both keep Ossoff over the 50 percent threshold that would hand him the seat outright while also winning the second slot in a potential runoff for themselves.
Here are five of the most interesting ads from this high-profile race.
Star Wars
The conservative super PAC Congressional Leadership Fund started it all.
Long before Ossoff’s face was plastered on front pages and television screens, the CLF launched a preemptive strike meant to paint Ossoff, 30, as immature and unprepared to serve in Congress.
The super PAC made the sale with an ad featuring footage from the Democrat’s college days, which showed him dressed as Star Wars’ Han Solo as part of his days in a college a capella group, talking about drinking and poking fun at female students.
“Jon Ossoff: not honest, not serious, not ready,” the ad says.
“Sorry, Jonny. But the truth strikes back.”
Part of a $1.1 million spot, the advertisement went viral, winning tons of play in the media and nationalizing the race.
All hell breaks loose
Dan Moody, a former Georgia Republican state senator with the backing of U.S. Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), made his name in the GOP field with a zany ad featuring a mess of flustered elephants and donkeys screeching and knocking over podiums — a symbol of what Moody sees as dysfunction in Washington.
“Put ‘em together, and all hell breaks loose. Each craving the spotlight, bellowing louder than the last,” the ad’s narrator says.
Moody’s ad includes one elephant wearing an elephant-sized pearl necklace — a jab at Republican rival Karen Handel, who has turned pearl necklaces into a staple of her wardrobe. As the Handel elephant lumbers into the screen, the narrator calls for voters to move on from career politicians (Handel is the former Georgia secretary of state).
The whole spot ends with Moody walking behind the animals, shoveling their excrement and portraying himself as a candidate “willing to joyfully do the hard stuff.”
“I’m going to need a bigger shovel,” Moody says.
Drain the swamp
While Ossoff frames his candidacy as a rebuke to Trump, who barely won the typically safe Republican district last November, some of the Republican candidates are duking it out to be the favorite of Trump supporters.
That field includes Bob Gray, a former local city councilmember who has tried to tie his campaign to the president.
Gray’s second television ad splices Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp” over footage of an actual swamp, with a narrator comparing Washington to the various parts of the swamp—reptiles, muck and all.
Then Gray steps out of his pickup truck, plops a vacuum into the swamp, and starts draining the swamp — or at least moving the swamp water around.
April Fools
Call it an April Fools Day prank or a dirty trick, but Gray was at it again on April 1 with a brief audio spot on Twitter meant to get under Handel’s skin.
Back when Gray ran for a city council seat, Handel endorsed him with a robocall. Now that that the two are running for the same congressional seat, though, Gray turned that endorsement around into an April Fools Day ad that ran along with a press release announcing falsely that Handel had dropped out and endorsed Gray.
Games people play
In the final days of the race, Handel ran a lighthearted pushback at her opponents while looking to frame herself as above the fray.
While she talks about the “other guys in this race [who] want to play games,” her husband, Steve plays her rivals.
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He shovels manure like Moody did in his ad that mocked Handel, he comes up with a gimmicky slogan — “Washington can’t handle Handel, — and he stands in a small river dressed in waders cheering that he’s “draining the swamp.”
“Enough with the games. I’m Karen Handel and I approve this message because I’ll deliver,” she says at the end of the ad.
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