Media Advisers Tone It Down in N.Y. Race--Lest They Become an Issue : Campaign: Lack of negative commercials in mayoral drive perhaps says something about the state of politics in the 1990s.

From its first line, the television advertisement reveals a lot--not only about the New York mayoral race but also about the problems of the celebrated media consultant who produced it.

“Some people will try to tell you this is a negative commercial,” it begins, sounding defensive. “But it isn’t because it’s fair and the facts are true.”

On one level, the ad, produced for former U.S. Atty. Rudolph W. Giuliani in his race against Democrat David N. Dinkins, reveals the difficult task that Giuliani faces. How does a Republican trailing badly in the polls chip away at the popularity of a black Democrat without harming his own candidacy?

On another level, though, the commercial says something about the predicament of Giuliani’s media adviser, Roger Ailes--and perhaps the state of politics in the 1990s.

After producing the sometimes hauntingly negative advertising last year for George Bush, Ailes has became so prominent that some believe he now risks becoming an issue in any campaign in which he works--the prince of video darkness, master of the 30-second political kill. That, in turn, may only make a stumbling Giuliani’s task harder.

On the Democratic side, the once low-rated Dinkins’ message and advertising are probably no better or worse than the placid candidate himself. They were produced by consultants David Doak and Bob Shrum, who handled Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt’s failed bid for the presidential nomination last year. But after a racial murder in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn in August threatened to divide the city, Dinkins and his ads suddenly seemed just right, so much so that reporters now privately call him “mayor apparent.”

If Dinkins does win, the political message of the New York mayoral race could be that it is dangerous for a media consultant to become too visible or to raise expectations about his abilities too high. And, after a presidential race that many think showered too much blame and credit on political handlers, this race may remind people that bad candidates and good luck are a lot more important than any bit of hex, lights and videotape.

“If either side has anything to lose, it is the illusion that media consultants have so much power,” said Mandy Grunwald, a Democratic media consultant herself.

Ailes has been dogged ever since the presidential contest, perhaps in part because he did his job too well. His ads became such evocative symbols of Bush’s attacks on Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis that he seemed to attract blame for everything unsavory about the presidential campaign.

In particular, Democrats charged Ailes and Bush with racism because Republican attacks on the Massachusetts prison furlough program focused on the crimes of Willie Horton, a furloughed black inmate. Dukakis is governor of Massachusetts.

Actually, Ailes’ own ads never mentioned or pictured Horton. But Bush’s stump speeches did, and so did independently produced ads for the candidate. “Bush seemed to be Teflon” for making these attacks, “but Ailes was Velcro,” said University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato.

So bespattered was Ailes that he sent newspapers letters with implicit threats of libel suits if they said that he had made Horton ads. In truth, Ailes’ mix of ads was more positive than Dukakis’ own ad campaign.

But some people think that Ailes has brought the trouble on himself by being too visible and too sensitive to criticism. “I think there are lots of difficult questions about how visible a consultant should be,” Republican consultant Doug Bailey said.

Ailes’ next job after the presidential campaign was the advertising campaign against a Denver referendum to build a new airport, and the new airport’s supporters made Ailes into a campaign issue.

The morning after Ailes’ first anti-airport ad aired, pro-airport organizers held a news conference to denounce the “New York media manipulator.” They eventually replied with an attack ad of their own, calling Ailes “master of the slick and sleazy.” The airport referendum won handily.

Similarly, Democrats have tried to make Ailes an issue in the current New Jersey governor’s race, where Ailes’ company represents the Republican nominee, Rep. Jim Courter.

Whether any of this has worked is uncertain. The Denver airport referendum was expected to win overwhelmingly and did. And even Democrats concede that the strategy failed when Dukakis tried it.

“It shows they (Democrats) are not only bankrupt of ideas, (but) they don’t learn from their mistakes,” Ailes said. “If I were them, I would be embarrassed to admit one guy gives them that much trouble.”

But in New York, Ailes’ reputation for negative campaigning, deserved or not, can only have added to inhibitions about attacking Dinkins. Even though he needs to tarnish Dinkins to win, “Giuliani will have to err on the side of propriety,” wrote New York magazine’s Joe Klein, “especially with controversial media master Roger Ailes on his team.”

Columnist Jimmy Breslin even called Ailes “the largest factor in the New York City mayoralty election.”

“I’ve been told Breslin’s a nut case,” Ailes said testily. “I would like to think I am an asset in this campaign. There have been predictions that Ailes has been a problem, but there is no evidence of that in New York.”

So far, journalists and consultants agree that Giuliani’s shortcomings as a candidate--not Ailes’ visibility--explains the former prosecutor’s woeful position in the polls. In particular, Giuliani, who had such success managing the New York press as U.S. attorney, has found that doing so as a politician is a far different thing.

“This is a tough town for amateurs,” Grunwald said, “and he is an amateur.”

But if Giuliani’s problems with the media are his own, some still think Ailes is so visible that this race could stain his reputation as the political equivalent of a silver bullet. When Republican candidate Ronald S. Lauder attacked Giuliani in the primary, for example, many questioned whether Ailes’ ads, which asked why everyone was so afraid of Rudy Giuliani, answered the criticism or enhanced it.

“The whole thing seems confused,” said Edwin Diamond, author of “The Spot,” a book about campaign advertising.

And Giuliani never seemed prepared for Dinkins’ victory in the Democratic primary over incumbent Mayor Edward I. Koch. “In the race against Ed Koch, Giuliani was the perfect candidate,” said consultant Bailey. Koch represented crime and corruption, he said, and Giuliani was a prosecutor. “You didn’t need to flesh out Giuliani, to give him other dimensions, and they didn’t.”

Koch’s defeat seemed to leave Giuliani without a reason for running. Dinkins became the reform candidate. And now, insiders say, Dinkins is likely to outspend Giuliani by 2 to 1 for television advertising.

The net effect of the race, some say, could be to deflate the exaggerated notion that politics is largely a matter of manipulated television images and that candidates and events don’t matter. “The remarkable thing about this year is how little impact the consultants will have had,” said Klein of New York magazine.

That may hold true, many believe, on the Democratic side as well.

Dinkins’ consultants, Doak and Shrum, also have a reputation for rough, often humorous negative ads. Their most famous, for Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) in his successful 1986 defense of his seat against Ed Zschau, was a takeoff on a K-Tel rock ‘n’ roll greatest hits record featuring the “great flip-flops” of “that great song and dance man Ed Zschau.”

In last year’s presidential race, a populist appeal about foreign trade barriers and Chrysler K cars that cost $48,000 in South Korea helped propel Gephardt to victory in Iowa. But a firestorm of criticism that the message seemed phony coming from a Washington insider blew their man away in the Southern primaries.

Doak and Shrum followed a safer course in New York. They depicted Dinkins, the Manhattan borough president and New York political machine veteran, as a man of great civility and gentleness. It all seemed designed to reassure white voters that Dinkins, a black, was an acceptable alternative to Koch.

The most effective ad, according to Dinkins’ internal polling, was a biography that highlighted Dinkins as opposing Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and supporting Jews. “The kind of man he is. The kind of mayor he’ll be,” it concludes. “A quiet courage that proves you don’t have to be loud to be strong.”

Through August, the ads and the message seemed troubled. “They looked terrible,” said one consultant privately. All that incredible painful (Dinkins) caution. Koch was controlling the dialogue.”

Christopher Arterton, dean of the Graduate School of Political Management in New York, said: “The most one can say about Dinkins’ campaign is that it has been very slow and steady and has given a rather mature presentation of the candidate.”

Then, on Aug. 23, white racist youths murdered a black man named Yusuf Hawkins in Bensonhurst. Dinkins reacted with mournful, quiet anger but not hate, calling on the city to denounce the murder but not blame Bensonhurst.

Koch, in contrast, “seemed like a lit match,” said consultant Grunwald. When blacks marched in Bensonhurst and were met by racial slurs, he told the protesters they should not have marched.

“Life played into Dinkins’ greatest strength, his demeanor, his statesmanlike personality,” Klein said.

“The city was very wary of being divided,” Shrum said.

Doak and Shrum had been ready to go negative on Koch. They had an ad, set to rock music, that said of Koch: “You talk too much.”

“David said he didn’t want to do it,” one Dinkins campaign official said.

Slow and steady worked. Dinkins beat Koch going away.

If it works twice, some believe one result could be a decline in negative campaigning. “I don’t see anything inherently wrong with them,” Shrum said, “but from now on any negative spots will have to be understated, very factual, careful, or very funny.”

Perhaps lingering, too, will be the message that consultants are not all-powerful. And that politics is not all manipulated images.

“A good consultant under the best of conditions can make a difference of 2 or 3 or 5 points,” Bailey said. “But it doesn’t happen that often.” Sometimes, real life gets in the way.