Ad Watch: “Ashamed”
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The Mark Kennedy campaign has tried to make an issue of rising crime in Minneapolis. They must have suceeded in registering it on the political scale because Klobuchar's seventh television ad is aimed to address the Kennedy charges.
Unfortunately for the Kennedy campaign, the result is the most powerful ad by any political candidate in Minnesota this year. The ad mixes the testimonials of the families of crime victims with a reminder that Klobuchar was endorsed -- the ad says -- by "Minnesota police."
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Well, sort of. Mark Kennedy was endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police. Klobuchar's endorsement came from The Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association . That's a draw.
But what makes the ad powerful is that one of the people giving a testimonial, comes back for a final shot. It's the mother of Tyesha Edwards. Tyesha is the 11-year old who was killed in a drive-by in 2002, a case in which arrests were made a month later.
And she ends the ad with, "Mark Kennedy, you should be ashamed."
It puts the Kennedy camp in a tough spot. Who wants to take on the mother of a murdered 11-year old girl? And the ad mixes a testimonial with a frontal attack.
Curiously, the victims' family members were not identified. One was the son of a victim of identity theft, the other the father of a man killed by a drunk driver, and only the name "Tyesha" gives away the identities of the third.
So it's impossible to say if these 'success stories" were as old -- four years old -- as the Edwards case, which leaves an opening for the Kennedy camp to make its point again...that crime is going up now, that things are worse...than then.
Perhaps the next ad will have to be the family members of the victims of unsolved crimes.
This could get uglier.
(Update: See post at Kennedy vs. the Machine on this ad)