Candidates Mask Strategy to Deceive Rivals : Ad Buys Become Game of ‘Intrigue, Espionage’

According to their reconnaissance, Kansas Sen. Bob Dole was about to make a big purchase of TV time in Florida--perhaps for last-minute attack ads.

But media buyers for Vice President George Bush were wary. The rumor might be a phony, planted by Dole forces to scare Bush into spending money to respond when he didn’t have to.

This game of tactical hide-and-seek had been going on for days.

Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt’s campaign is telling reporters he has heavy buys in every major Southern city. But that, most media buyers believe, is a smoke-screen, too, designed to mask Gephardt’s more careful strategy, and perhaps hide money problems.

Such are the subtleties of the video campaign for President on Super Tuesday next week, the massive 20-state primary-and-caucus contest now four days away.

Sought a Conservative

When Southern Democratic leaders conceived of concentrating primaries in 14 Southern and Border states on one day early in the primary season, their intention was to help elect a conservative Southern Democrat as President.

But instead, Super Tuesday has become a massive tangle of mini-elections. And buying advertising time in its 121 TV markets has turned into a study of carefully targeting which inexpensive markets contain more of each candidate’s likely voters, of trying to deceive rivals about where that is and of trying to spy on the other guy to discern his strategy.

“This has become so difficult,” said Anthony Fabrizio, the man buying commercial time for the Dole campaign. “It is not only a game of demographics, numbers, instinct and experience but also a game of intrigue and espionage.”

Much depends on these final days, when several campaigns have hinted that they are about to make last-minute surges in markets where before they have run no ads, in the hope of catching rivals off guard.

Twirling Acrobat

Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis made some last-minute buys Friday to air an attack ad featuring a twirling acrobat, whose gyrations are supposed to represent alleged flip-flops in the record of rival Gephardt. Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr., too, started an 11th-hour attack on Gephardt.

Gephardt, in turn, revealed late Friday that he would respond with a 10-second attack ad depicting Dukakis as a dirty campaigner.

Bush and Dole also revealed late Friday that they would exchange late attack ads. Dole dropped what his campaign had described as its “nuclear bomb,” an attack on Bush for his role in, and changing explanations about, the Iran-Contra scandal. The ad, which Dole supposedly will spend an added $300,000 to air, will run in Missouri, Maryland, Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana.

The Bush camp, which denounced the ad as a “direct attack on the President,” worthy only of a Democrat, will retaliate with an attack ad of its own, a revamped version of an ad used to great effect in New Hampshire suggesting that Dole intends to raise taxes.

“It’s hold-on-to-your-hats time from now until Super Tuesday,” said Bush spokesman Peter Teeley. “There may be all kinds of charges and allegations.”

Other Tricks, Too

Campaigns have used other tricks, too. The Dole campaign, for example, managed early in the week to create the illusion that it was running more ads than it actually was. Dole prepared a particularly rough attack ad depicting Bush as a lightweight who had made little impact during his long political career. The commercial ran, in Florida, exactly once.

The ad was reported on TV news shows, however, giving it widespread free exposure--thus saving money for the campaign. And because most people heard about it as news rather than seeing the attack itself, the ad was less likely to be perceived as mean and backfire on the Dole campaign.

Deciding where to buy ads has become a daunting process of cost-benefit analysis. Each campaign identified a target audience it knew would respond to its particular message.

‘Cost Per Delegate’

Then it added up the number of presidential convention delegates within its target group, and cross-referenced each congressional district where they live by the cost of TV time there, to come up with a “cost per delegate” of buying TV time.

“It is all a game of getting the most bang for your buck,” said Republican candidate Jack Kemp’s media buyer, Robin Roberts.

Bush advertised following “The Cosby Show,” revealing not only his campaign’s wealth, but also his effort to appeal to younger voters.

Other campaigns aim for wealthier, better-educated viewers. “Dukakis goes for the ‘LA Law’ types,” said David Axelrod, media consultant to Illinois Sen. Paul Simon, who is skipping Tuesday’s contest.

And while traditional wisdom holds that no program is distinctly Republican or Democratic, Republican campaigns are showing a preference for such shows as “Murder, She Wrote,” “20-20,” “Matlock” and “60 Minutes”--programs that attract older, relatively wealthy audiences.

Democratic time-buyers are more likely to prefer “Growing Pains” or “Who’s the Boss,” programs that in Robert’s terms, “skew young.”

Golf, said Democrat Axelrod, is Republican. “Basketball is more Democratic.”

Time slots of particular interest to time-buyers are what they refer to as “news adjacencies,” those three- or four-minute gaps before and after local and network news, and also during the network morning programs

From interviews with the various campaigns, in which strategists were mostly asked about what their rivals were doing, the following approximate strategies emerged:

BUSH--The vice president’s campaign, perhaps the most secretive of all, has the money to mount the closest thing to a blanket strategy, concentrating heavily in Florida, Georgia and Texas, three of the biggest states, and to a lesser extent in North Carolina, Oklahoma and Missouri.

Here in Atlanta, no one matches Bush, whose ads run in the most sought after time slots.

DOLE--Much more strapped for money than Bush, Dole’s campaign is a guerrilla force, concentrated mostly in states where he has some geographic affinity: Missouri and Oklahoma, which border his home state of Kansas, and North Carolina, home state of his wife, Elizabeth. In each, he is running enough ads for the average viewer to have seen 10 spots, or two different ads five times each.

Dole has run a few ads in Georgia and in Florida, second only to Texas in the size of its delegate state Tuesday, but he is skipping Texas, where Bush was once elected to Congress.

It is, say media consultants, a strategy of damage control and limited resources.

KEMP--The New York congressman, severely short of cash and a long shot in all the Super Tuesday states, borrowed money to run ads in South Carolina in advance of today’s primary, but so far has not bought any ads for Super Tuesday.

ROBERTSON--Former religious broadcaster Pat Robertson had rescheduled his Super Tuesday time frequently enough to have confused his rivals. On Friday, Robertson ran a half-hour program in six cities in Texas, but the campaign refused to disclose where else it had time reserved after that.

DUKAKIS--On the Democratic side, Dukakis’ strategy is matter of precision delegate counting.

In Texas, for instance, he is concentrating on border towns, where he appears to have far outspent any rivals, largely with ads in which Dukakis speaks directly into the camera in fluent Spanish.

A typical viewer there is likely to see Dukakis ads 10 to 15 times or more.

Across the South, Dukakis also is spending heavily in university towns, which are typically liberal. In Austin, Tex., for instance, Dukakis has spent $12,340 for ads on KTBC, more than any other candidate. Gore is next with $9,140.

Dukakis’ advertising is heavy, too, in South Florida, in Baltimore, Virginia and North Carolina.

GORE--The Tennessee senator had vowed to outspend every Democrat in the South. His ads include an attack on Gephardt’s alleged flip-flops, taken from a clip from a debate in Dallas; ads in Spanish aimed at rival Dukakis, ads depicting him as a populist fighting for American workers, and ads taking on the corporate Establishment.

That mixture, said consultants, typifies Gore’s strategic and financial problem. He cannot target his ads as carefully as Dukakis or Gephardt because his message and his audience is split.

JACKSON--The Rev. Jesse Jackson doesn’t need to target his audience. Nor, like other Democrats, must he spend money on ads telling voters who he is.

But Jackson’s campaign nonetheless plans to spend $100,000 trying to convince voters who already like him but are undecided as to how to vote that he has a chance to win.

Jackson’s ads will target Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia.

GEPHARDT--Campaign strategists assume that Gephardt owns his home state, Missouri, and neighboring Arkansas. His Southern strategy involved targeting the 35 congressional districts in the South where he has the endorsement of local congressmen.

And as the primary draws clear, he is turning away from Florida, where his aides now say privately that they expect Dukakis to win, and increasing his media emphasis in Texas. There he is using the attack ad he used on Dukakis in South Dakota, and another featuring Texas Rep. Marvin Leath and attacking both Dukakis and Gore.

Gephardt’s problem, however, is that he didn’t have the money coming into Super Tuesday to run the ads he wanted.

THE SOUTH CAROLINA AND WYOMING CONTESTS SOUTH CAROLINA

THE STATE:

Population: 3,378,000 (1986 est.)

Racial/ethnic makeup: 68.8% white, 30.4% black. Latinos, Asians and American Indians less than 1% each.

Economy: Manufacturing (textiles and clothing, chemicals); agriculture (tobacco, soybeans, cotton, livestock); tourism. Major cities: Columbia (capital), 100,000;

Charleston, 69,000.

THE GOP PRIMARY:

Today’s primary is a Republican event. Democrats will select their delegates in a caucus process that begins on March 12. The GOP primary is open to any of the state’s 1.3 million registered voters. Polls close at 7 p.m. EST.

Delegates at stake: 37. The candidate with the most votes in each of six congressional districts wins that district’s three delegates. The candidate with the most votes statewide wins all 19 at-large delegates. (1.6% of total)

WYOMING

THE STATE:

Population: 507,000 (1986 est.)

Racial/ethnic makeup: 94% white anglo, 4% Latino, 1% black, 1% American Indian.

Economy: Petroleum and minerals, tourism, ranching, agriculture.

Major cities: Casper, 51,000; Cheyenne (capital), 47,000.

THE GOP COUNTY CONVENTIONS:

Republicans will meet at the county level today to select 12 of the state’s 18 convention delegates. The remaining six will be chosen at a state convention in May. (Democrats also hold county conventions today, but they do not choose any delegates until May.), Los Angeles Times