Unflattering renditions of state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, a Brighton Republican, left, and state Rep. Yadira Caraveo, a Thornton Democrat, appear in negative TV ads released the week of Sept. 12, 2022, in Colorado's 8th Congressional District, where the two are facing off in the most competitive U.S. House race in the state.

Unflattering renditions of state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, a Brighton Republican, left, and state Rep. Yadira Caraveo, a Thornton Democrat, appear in negative TV ads released the week of Sept. 12, 2022, in Colorado's 8th Congressional District, where the two are facing off in the most competitive U.S. House race in the state.

What do you call someone who decides whom to support for high political office based on cheesy, 30-second television ads?

Why, of course, you call that person a voter.

For countless masses who will fill out a ballot in the coming weeks, television commercials constitute their principal source of information and are often the determining factor in which box they check. This is especially true for swing voters, those without a fixed partisan allegiance who do not pay that much attention to the political process and often make up their mind late in the game.

We are now into October and the advertising is in high gear. Television executives and sales staff are busily placing orders for their new Tesla or Beemer.

And what a collection of informative, illuminating, inspiring ads they are. With dark visuals and ominous music, we are told that pediatrician Yadira Caraveo is a “radical politician.” Then up pops Caraveo’s ad attacking her opponent, Barbara Kirkmeyer, as an “extremist politician.” That’s the choice. Do you vote against the “radical” or the “extremist”? Even if anyone who knows them will attest that both are honorable people well within the mainstream of their respective party.

A few months ago, Democrats thought it a good idea to intrude in the Republican primary by spending millions to boost Joe O’Dea’s challenger, worried that O’Dea’s moderate approach could make him likeable and viable. But that was all so much yesterday. Now, Democratic ads label him “MAGA Republican Joe O’Dea” who threatens everything short of apple pie. Perhaps that, too.

Here’s a challenge: Pick any channel and watch it for just 30 minutes. See if you can do so without seeing multiple ads, each more foreboding than the last, sponsored by Democratic candidates or allied interests on the issue of abortion rights. In a year that looked to be hostile, it is the most potent weapon in the Democrats’ arsenal following the Dobbs decision. That drum is being beat incessantly and without subtlety.

While the tawdry attack ads are particularly onerous, a good deal of the warmer, softer stuff is hardly much better. Even if it is more friendly to the eye and the stomach. I know Brittany Pettersen to be a decent and thoughtful person. But if I was less politically attuned, how much would I glean of her qualifications from visuals of her taking her toddler son to preschool?

The minivan seems to have replaced the suburban white picket fence from the political fare of years gone by.

A good rule of thumb is that if a campaign emphasizes the positive in their advertising mix, their polls are solid. If the fare is mostly slash-and-burn, they are behind or, at best, it is a deeply competitive race. And if they are on air, week after week, with a combination of positive and negative messages, then money is no object.

The grim, malicious ads are easy to produce and tend to be particularly unimaginative. They proliferate for a simple reason. They work. Multiple studies have shown that viewers absorb the message of an attack spot with far fewer exposures than a positive message requires.

The difference is even more notable online where the click-through rate for a negative message vastly exceeds the positive. It might be human nature. We seem drawn to the gossip, the rumor and the vile.

A story out of California from decades ago stuck with me. After an especially nasty Senate race, at least by the standards of the era, it was finally election day. A Sacramento television station sent a crew out for person on the street interviews about the relief finally being felt with the end of the nasty ads.

The TV crew came upon a retired colonel who waxed eloquently about the preciousness of our democracy and how the campaign had cheapened it. The reporter then asked for which candidate this man had voted. He replied (changed to conventional names), “Smith, of course. Jones is a tax cheat.” While bemoaning the unbecoming hyperbole and bellicosity, this voter had taken them to heart and to the voting booth.

In the intervening years, production values have ramped way up along with the number of media outlets and the political money to fund the ever more vicious toxicity.

Those with boundaries who wish to protect themselves are advised to don a hazmat suit before reclining in their comfy chair to watch a newscast or sporting event or favorite evening show.

We have also seen the explosion of so-called independent expenditure committees which raise and spend immense dollars without direct coordination with the campaign. (Wink, wink.) A huge number of the low-grade ads come from such entities and other outside advocacy groups. Candidates are less and less in charge of their own messaging.

As the saying goes, politics is not beanbag. Elections have always been bitter and hard-fought. The premium, in fact the only payoff, is on winning. Style points rarely count. Before radio and television, much less the internet, the dirty work was done via circulars and pamphlets along with newspapers so partisan that they would make FOX News or MSNBC blush.

Still, what passes for political discourse these days and what prompts political choices leaves much to be desired.

Having cut my teeth as a political media consultant, I know that the industry is largely a copy-cat operation that regularly travels the low road based on voter response.

The political marketplace is driven by the demand side. When voters stop responding to vacuous messages and wretched attacks, candidates and consultants will cease feeding them a steady supply of such garbage.

Otherwise put, if you are offended by what fills your television screen every election season, quit rewarding the purveyors of such debris with your vote.

In the meantime, don your protection when hitting the your remote’s “on” button and settle in for what has become a mashup of Jerry Springer, Wrestlemania, America’s Most Wanted and House of Cards.

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