Savagery Shows Some Candidates’ Desperation, Analysts Say : Political Ad Plethora Causing Din in N.H.

MANCHESTER, N.H. —  Now they’re getting nasty.

With three days left before the New Hampshire primary, the televised selling of the President, 1988, has turned aggressive and personal: Several campaigns are running ads attacking other candidates and changing their stump speeches to fit them.

It signals, say media consultants, that several candidates are now clawing to stay in the game. According to the wisdom of politics, a gambler always doubles his bet when his pockets are almost empty.

To voters, it must sometimes seem as if alien invaders have seized the radio and TV stations here, so concentrated is the advertising with only eight days between the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. As many as four political spots will run in one commercial break. And the paid advertising is more important now since a New England blizzard has all but shut down most campaigns.

The problem is breaking through what media consultants call the static. All those ads can run together in voters’ minds, like too many musical notes mixing to make only noise, campaign officials worry.

“You’ve either got to be on more than anyone else, which is expensive, or you have to have ads that are clearly better than anyone else’s,” said Richard Nicholson, New Hampshire campaign director for Democrat Albert Gore Jr.

The noise is loudest on the Republican side, where the race has broken wide open since Vice President George Bush’s third-place finish in Iowa.

Making Similar Effort

The two front-runners, Kansas Sen. Bob Dole and Bush, both are trying to grab hold of President Reagan’s still-popular coattails here, while trying to kick the other fella loose.

Dole’s toughest ad shows Bush’s picture fading off the screen, while the narrator notes which Reagan initiatives Dole pushed through Congress. After each one the narrator adds, “Bush had nothing to do with it.” Bush’s picture gets fainter and fainter until it disappears.

Dole is ready with an even tougher spot called “Footsteps,” which depicts Bush as a lightweight whose footsteps in history have left no mark.

But since Dole’s nightly tracking polls, which measure each ad’s impact, now show him nearly even with Bush, Dole officials hint they may scrap “Footsteps” and take a less confrontational approach.

Bush’s key ad shows clips of the vice president with various world leaders: “George Bush, ready on day one to be a great President,” the narrator intones over a shot of Bush walking with Reagan in the marble columned hallway outside the Oval Office. The frame freezes as the President puts his arm around Bush, and a head shot of the vice president is superimposed in the corner.

With his campaign stumbling, Bush has changed his strategy, and new ads may be coming, although his campaign won’t confirm it.

Former religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, trying hard to keep the momentum from his second-place finish in Iowa, attacks the economic plans of Bush and New York Rep. Jack Kemp. The ad quotes a Wall Street Journal story about a computer analysis of the Republicans’ economic platforms that claims Robertson’s is best. “Bush’s ranked next to last. Jack Kemp proposed a plan that would result in five years of depression.”

In other spots, the former religious television personality talks directly into the camera about such subjects as loans to communist countries and school prayer.

“Every session of the Supreme Court opens with prayer. And yet the Supreme Court said that although they can pray, little children in the schools of America can’t pray. Does that make sense to you? Of course not. Let’s make common sense common practice in Washington.”

Kemp’s spots depict the New York congressman as the true conservative compared with Bush and Dole, trying in effect to claim the same territory Robertson now stalks. Kemp, whose campaign also could die in the Manchester cold, has ignored Robertson in his ads.

On the Democratic side, the harshest and riskiest ads are Illinois Sen. Paul Simon’s, who had to borrow another $110,000 to run them.

One ad suggests that Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt is not to be trusted. Another says: “Sometimes a candidate’s toughest opponent is his own record. . . . The question is what would President Gephardt do.”

The strategy is born of desperation, said Los Angeles Times political consultant William Schneider. Simon’s appeal in Iowa was his morality, his honesty and his character, he said.

“These ads could undermine his image,” Schneider said. “They seem inconsistent with the man. It’s hard to portray Paul Simon as a tough guy.”

In New Hampshire, Gephardt is running two ads from his successful Iowa campaign, a basic biographical spot and his call that America should threaten to impose trade barriers on allies to open foreign markets.

On Friday, Gephardt’s campaign asked Boston TV stations to grant them added air time to answer Simon’s attack ads.

The man least likely to engage in this snowball fight is front-runner Michael S. Dukakis, because he has the most to lose.

Dukakis, who changed media consultants midway through Iowa, is running several ads, including one on Nicaragua, the homeless, talking with children in front of an American flag and a new one with a New England church steeple behind him that touches on his various campaign themes, his opposition to Seabrook, oil import fees and open trade markets.

The most ubiquitous spot hammers home the idea that the Massachusetts governor “stopped Seabrook,” the unpopular nuclear power plant here.

To counter Dukakis’ image as a formal, distant figure, the spot is an emotional one, showing grainy black and white photos of the plant, with the sound of a heartbeat at the beginning and narration from men and women fearful of the plant’s dangers. Enter Dukakis, seen in black-and-white news footage walking outside the plant:

“Mike Dukakis saw the problem. He had the courage to do what was right for the people of New England.”

The Rev. Jesse Jackson launched his modest $32,000 ad campaign Friday with testimonials from New Hampshire voters who did not back Jackson in 1984 but plan to this year.

Gore Airs Two Spots

Gore, the Tennessee senator who did little campaigning in Iowa, is airing two spots in New Hampshire designed to distinguish him from the pack. The spots are running on the Maine and Manchester stations, but not on the more expensive Boston stations that broadcast here.

“He’s not like all the rest,” one ad says. “The one Democrat who can win.”

Being different is Gary Hart’s message too, although it has met with mixed reviews. In each of his four spots, the former Colorado senator talks into the camera at close range. In two, he suggests he was hounded out of the race last spring after publicity surrounding his activities with Miami model Donna Rice:

“There has been a lot of casual talk about character this year and as usual the talkers don’t tell you what they mean. They use that word as a smoke screen because they don’t like someone who is different, who doesn’t play by the same rules . . . .”

“When powerful people and the media tell you have to quit,” Hart says in one spot, “character is saying ‘hell no.’ ”

The camera gets closer and closer to Hart’s face, until the candidate’s head appears larger than the screen.

“I can’t figure these ads out,” Schneider said, echoing the sentiment of several media consultants. “His ads are so very personal, and that would seem the last thing he wants to bring up. That’s not his strong suit.”