Campaign ad with sheep: The nation is flocking to it

Reporting from San Francisco — 

Fred Davis -- the man who introduced vermin, Paris Hilton, bad hair and now demonic mutton into our political discourse -- is a bit taken aback by the reaction to his latest creation. “More sheep in my day than I was expecting,” he said after sorting through messages from reporters across the country, all of them wanting to talk about the online video -- an instant cult classic -- he created for Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Carly Fiorina. “You certainly never know what’s going to catch on.”

The spot, posted Wednesday, assails rival Tom Campbell as a profligate wolf in fiscal-conservative-sheep’s clothing. (A tortured description, perhaps, but no stranger than the imagery, which includes sheep gamboling and grazing, lightning bolts, a Roman column and a man covered in sheepskin crawling on all fours and leering with a glowing red eye.)

Much of the response has been of the “What were they thinking?” variety, though Davis estimated the reviews have been split 50-50. Regardless, he noted that plenty of people are talking about the ad, which has been broadcast nationwide on cable TV and viewed more than 500,000 times on YouTube. The tag #demonsheep instantly surged near the top of Twitter’s trending topics.

“My goal is to get things noticed,” Davis said. “The best you can hope for is water cooler talk. People are blasting it as the most insane ad ever. Others are calling it a stroke of genius. If, when the furor dies down, they simply remember they should maybe question whether Tom Campbell is telling them the truth, then it will have been a success.”

The Campbell camp, for its part, called the ad a sign of desperation -- a “full mutton meltdown,” as spokesman Jamie Fisfis put it. The third major GOP Senate hopeful, Irvine Assemblyman Chuck Devore, produced his own video, tongue firmly in cheek, forswearing “silly slogans” and the political display of satanic sheep.

Davis, a Hollywood-based consultant, operates with the instincts of a political guerrilla (think Abbie Hoffman, not Che Guevara), often wielding humor as his weapon of choice.

He was the man behind the flashbulb-popping 2008 ad comparing celebrity candidate Barack Obama to Paris Hilton, which proved the most effective John McCain spot of the campaign, as Obama aides grudgingly conceded. More recently, he created a loopy ad for Andy McKenna, a GOP candidate for Illinois governor, placing the luxuriant mane of the disgraced Rod Blagojevich on men, women, children and even the Capitol dome in Springfield. (McKenna finished third in Tuesday’s primary.)

But the closest comparison to the Fiorina spot, in its feral audacity and the response, is the commercial Davis created in the 2002 Georgia governor’s race for a little-known, underfunded farmer named Sonny Perdue.

The ad showed a giant rat -- with a gold crown and bling spelling “King Roy” -- marauding Godzilla-like across the Georgia countryside and scaling the state Capitol.

A “shameful display of bad judgment . . . sad and disappointing,” said Gov. Roy Barnes’ campaign manager. Others denounced the spot as just plain weird.

Still . . .

“Last I checked, Sonny Perdue was governor of Georgia,” Davis said.

So the latest barrage of ridicule concerns him not at all. “When you’re in a state where it costs $5 million to run a 30-second ad statewide . . . you have to think differently. You have to think outside the box,” Davis said. “It’s tough to get the attention of people in California. This has caught the attention of people across the country.”

For the record, the role of the stealth sheep was played by a nameless crew member. “Not a professional sheep impersonator,” Davis said, “or anything like that.”

In fact, the auteur in him was almost apologetic about the low-budget production. “The rat costume cost about $20,000,” Davis said, sounding almost wistful. “This one probably cost $200.”

mark.barabak@latimes.com