It Takes a Tight Focus to Raise a Low Profile

She has logged hundreds of miles on the campaign trail, exchanged scores of hearty handshakes and thrown her soul into dozens of speeches. But in the end, Michela Alioto’s quest to become California’s secretary of state may depend on this:

A single 30-second TV ad airing in Los Angeles for just one week.

Alioto is a “down-ballot” candidate, one of those earnest, underfunded people seeking an office below the marquee races for governor and U.S. Senate.

Unlike the top-of-the-ticket types, down-ballot dwellers get little notice from the media and can rarely raise the campaign cash needed to compete on TV. In a political world where television is king, that makes them all but invisible.

Alioto is one of the lucky ones: She actually has enough money to get her message--however briefly--on the air. Doing so, however, will consume half her total campaign budget of about $900,000. And the commercial will be seen only in Los Angeles--on only one station and only this week.

“We’ve been working on this campaign since last November, and it’s sad to think that a full year of work is going to come down to a 30-second TV spot that the average person in L.A. will see maybe three times,” said Tom Pier, Alioto’s campaign manager. “That’s 90 seconds of communication. That’s all we get.”

As it turns out, they’re lucky to get that. Recently, network affiliates in Los Angeles and other markets have begun rejecting requests by down-ballot candidates for air time--or restricting them to a few not-so-choice slots.

The reason? Money. When they sell time to candidates, stations must offer it at a price below what they get from sponsors of initiatives and regular clients selling soap or tires. If there’s a glut of ads, the lowest bidder for the time loses.

That is but one sad fact of life for those seeking down-ballot offices, a list of important but in some cases obscure jobs that includes lieutenant governor, attorney general, controller, treasurer and superintendent of public instruction.

Denied the luxury of an extended TV campaign, down-ballot candidates must craft their on-air pitches with extreme care. A gubernatorial hopeful can parcel out information in eight or 10 or a dozen spots. The down-balloters have to speak their piece in one.

“Your message inevitably gets compressed,” said Bill Carrick, a consultant to the campaign of state Sen. Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) for attorney general. “We’d all love to do the bio spot, a record spot, an issue spot, a contrast-with-my-opponent spot and an uplifting close. But the money’s not there.”

The pressure to cram everything into one ad produces mixed results. With all of a campaign’s time and talent poured into a single spot, the product is sometimes a disciplined, stellar effort.

“You’re not running and gunning, slapping these babies together, responding overnight to an opponent’s ad,” said Richie Ross, a consultant for Lockyer and Assemblyman Cruz Bustamante (D-Fresno), who is running for lieutenant governor. “We probably wrote 25 versions of our Bustamante spot. There’s time, and the ads are better because of it.”

Sometimes, however, the urge to say it all in one message prompts candidates to overreach, leading to a kitchen-sink ad that swamps viewers with information. Smaller budgets also mean less money to spend on production values, the ingredients that help make an ad look, sound and feel rich and appealing.

“There’s a reason Coke and Pepsi spend $1 million to produce a spot,” GOP consultant Sal Russo said. “TV is an emotion medium, and high production value helps to elicit the emotional response you want.”

In producing a spot for U.S. Senate candidate Matt Fong, Russo was able to shoot amid the redwoods in Marin County, and use film instead of videotape for a richer look. Fong could afford it--he has raised close to $8 million.

Russo’s down-ballot candidate this year, attorney general hopeful Dave Stirling, has a lot less money in his wallet--$1.6 million at the end of last month. Consequently, he will not be starring in any ads filmed in the woods.

Another factor shaping ads for down-ballot candidates is the need to anticipate what opponents might do in their ads, since there will be no money left for an on-air response.

Ross likens this strategic game to “sudden-death football. You have to read the signs, figure out what your opponent might do and then kick the winning field goal.”

To understand the lot of the down-ballot candidates, it helps to look at the ad budgets of the up-ballot group. The two men running for governor--Democrat Gray Davis and Republican Dan Lungren--are spending $1 million or more a week on TV ads.

Expenditures on ads for and against Proposition 5, the Indian gambling initiative, are running close to $2 million a week.

Ray McNally, a Republican consultant in Sacramento, says that to “truly compete and make your message sink in,” a candidate must spend a minimum of $1 million a week on advertising in Los Angeles.

“So these poor schleps who have $600,000 tops for their entire campaign haven’t got a chance,” McNally said. “They wind up buying time on cable stations that nobody watches. It’s kind of sad.”

State Sen. Tim Leslie (R-Tahoe City) is one of those poor schleps. Leslie, the GOP candidate for lieutenant governor, has so far spent about $300,000 on ads.

His approach is somewhat unusual. He is devoting some of his cash to spots that last just 10 seconds, instead of the standard half-minute. Consultants call these “billboard” or “bumper-strip” ads because there’s scarcely time to communicate a candidate’s name and the office he or she is seeking.

“With those, you’re just trying to pound your name into voters’ heads so that they have some foggy recognition of it in the voting booth,” McNally said.

Leslie’s 10-second spot manages to deliver his name, position on three issues and slogan--”Values still matter.” The 30-second version of the ad accomplishes that and much more, portraying the senator as courageous for refusing to quit serving in the Legislature despite having cancer.

To maximize their impact, the down-ballot candidates typically air spots in the final week of the campaign, when voters tend to perk up and pay attention. But that’s also a time when the ad traffic is thickest, making it hard for a single spot to stand out.

Given their one-shot ad campaigns, down-ballot office seekers must strive more than the more prominent candidates to distinguish themselves from the gray blur of the crowd. Some believe that humorous or outrageous ads are the way to go. Others are wary of that approach, saying voters tend to take their politics seriously and may feel more comfortable with candidates who air meat-and-potatoes ads.

Either way, being different--but not too different--is the order of the day. Strategists for Phil Angelides used the gimmick of a phony TV interview show--with a mock reporter asking the treasurer candidate questions--to give their ad a fresh look.

Lockyer’s spot grabs the eye with violent footage from the North Hollywood shootout.

And Bustamante’s ad uses home-movie clips of families to underscore the candidate’s message that we should “judge ourselves . . . by the success of our next generation.” The ad’s nostalgic footage includes a shot of former President John F. Kennedy embracing his daughter, Caroline.

In preparing their 30-second pitch, Alioto’s strategists rejected the idea of a conventional ad, figuring that politics-weary viewers would simply tune it out. Instead, “we decided we had to take a risk, make it clever, quirky and memorable,” Pier said.