By Voters will enter the polls on June 3 to finally choose the mayor of Long Beach. After eight years under the ups and downs of Bob Foster’s leadership, citizens of Long Beach must pick between two young, charismatic and intelligent candidates: Damon Dunn and Robert Garcia.
Right after the announcement of the two main candidates, my hopes were high for this campaign. We have Dunn, a moderate conservative with a silver tongue who sells himself as a more Reagan-esque figure than say, a Michelle Bachmann type. Then we have a member of Foster’s administration, Garcia, who is in many ways a unique Long Beach success story in the making.
Yet, we cannot escape the attack ads, which only seem to become more and more brutal as the election date nears. Being on the voter rolls in Long Beach means we’re subjected to some vile and contemptible politics-as-usual. Garcia has accused Dunn of being a far-right-wing Tea Party member in disguise. Dunn responded by reminding the populace that Garcia worked for the Bush-Cheney campaign in his early days. Allegations of financial improprieties, dodgy deals and tawdry relations with right-wing forces are fed into our mailboxes on glossy 81/2 x 11 papers almost every day at this point.
I happened to sit in on the mayoral debates last Wednesday. While it was an inconvenience given the proximity of my finals, I was intent on approaching this election with all the necessary information to make the right decision at the ballot box. Again, I saw no substantial differences between these two candidates. I was subjected to rounds of agreement with varying amounts of commitment and fake grins. One interesting moment of the campaign came when Garcia offered up a pledge to end the negative campaigning that very night, if Dunn agreed to do the same. With this, Garcia shook Dunn’s hand on the stage.
Dunn, of course, refused; with only two weeks before the election, how could he afford not to attack Garcia? Dunn provided the audience with a few laughs and quality locker-room trash talk by asking, “Do you want to be the hammer or do you want to be the nail?”
The thing that struck me the most was the candor with which they spoke of negative advertisements. Both of them claimed that they did not enjoy doing it and even went as far as to say that, on a personal level, they like each other. Yet, here we are, left with nothing but an empty sentiment and a stack of vicious mailers. There are only two possible explanations here: either, they lied, and they don’t particularly care for each other, or there’s something more pragmatic about this, possibly that attack ads are actually very effective for their campaigns.
Frankly, I don’t want to see these attack ads anymore, but I still want to be involved with the election. So here’s what I recommend, tune out. Don’t listen to these attack ads, and only listen to the ads that promote positions and experiences. Throw them out, stop reading them and let them crowd your recycle bin instead of your head. Let’s just call this method damage control.
