Ugly photos

The Brad Hicks/Denise Krause race has gotten to the ugly-photo stage.

I wish they would stop this, but neither will.

Both campaigns followed the same messaging strategy. Each started out with get-to-know-the-candidate ads.

Then, a week ago, that ended. Now they want you to get to know the other candidate. And by that, they want you to fear the opponent, dislike them, and hold them in contempt as sold-out puppets of the rival team.

The early Hicks ads presented him as Mr. Nice Guy: bipartisan, a reach-across-the-aisle type, someone people other than MAGA Trump-supporting Republicans could feel comfortable with.

This is Hicks as he presents himself. He is a healthy-looking man in late middle age with a normal complexion. This is the opening photo on his website, so I presume it is how he wants to be seen: wearing an SOU-branded hoodie, talking earnestly with what appears to be a student.

Hicks represented his work at the Chamber of Commerce as bipartisan. That is thoroughly dishonest, as the Chamber PAC's behavior shows. But it is a welcome aspiration, a promise of new and different behavior in a new role, and it is possible that he both believes it and would behave that way in office.

Denise Krause's campaign started with the same get-to-know-her approach. Her meta-message was that she is a warm, relatable woman who has overcome problems. Photographs established her as a mother. She described a cancer diagnosis, a fight with her insurance company to get the treatment that worked, and her 30-something years of sobriety. There is a photo of her holding a hen at her home.

Like Hicks, Krause appears to be in late middle age, and, like him, she has a normal complexion in her own self-presentation:

Both campaigns have gone negative -- ugly negative. There is a common theme. Hicks characterizes Krause as a rubber stamp for Democrats and depicts her in unflattering, grainy black and white:

Although Krause does not hold office in Salem, Hicks pictures her here speaking with the Oregon State Capitol in the background. The implication: if you want to throw out the Salem incumbents, defeat Krause. It is dishonest in being misleading, but it meets the minimum standard of campaigns: it is not literally false, since it does not directly say she is speaking as an incumbent legislator. I wish he didn't do that.

Krause does the same thing to Brad Hicks. In Krause's ads, Hicks is dark and deeply wrinkled:

She says Hicks's claims of bipartisanship and political independence are pretend and that he is a cynical buddy of powerful special interests that fund his campaign: insurance companies, drug companies, and big tobacco:

She repeatedly calls him "Republican Brad Hicks." There is no evidence that Hicks is anything other than a good, loyal Trump-supporting Republican, so she empathizes that label. Being a Republican is probably a net-negative for Hicks this year in Senate District 3, which covers purple Medford and blue Ashland.

This "Hicks is squeezing you" ad makes a misleading characterization, taking four words Hicks used in 2021, "Just go to work," putting them in the present tense about the current economic environment, implying that he is scolding working people who are complaining about high insurance and gas prices today. That is the same standard of truthfulness that Hicks used in putting Krause at the State Capitol: Misleading for sure, but not literally false. I urged her not to run it, and I wish she hadn't.

The characterization each candidate makes of the other -- that each is a puppet rubber stamp for the team that funds them -- is unkind and overstated, but probably not completely wrong. I expect Krause to vote like a Democrat. I expect Hicks to vote like a Republican. Hicks is funded by corporate PACs and giant Republican interest groups. Krause is impoverished in comparison, but she has ads up, many paid for by unions. I presume both candidates are genuinely and sincerely politically aligned with the people who fund them. It isn't necessary to characterize one another as corrupt and cynical.

The negative ads erode the public's belief in representative government. I would prefer a different approach.

-- I wish Krause's campaign ads would present and sell the Democratic-oriented policies she would advance. She is a Democrat: sell that. After all, it is how I expect her to vote. And if she disagrees with Governor Kotek on some things, spell them out clearly. 

-- I wish Hicks's campaign ads would present and sell the Republican-oriented policies he would advance. He is a Republican: sell that. After all, it is how I expect him to vote. And if he disagrees with President Trump on some things, spell them out clearly.

Otherwise, this is a contest over whom voters dislike and fear more: Governor Kotek and her corrupt puppet, or President Trump and his corrupt puppet. 

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