On Thursday, October 7, 2004, at 11:21 AM, Constance Nompelis wrote:
It has always been my understanding that lawn signs serve to provide name recognition for local candidates who may be relatively unknown around town. The sign is supposed to create interest and stick the name into the memories of passersby. I find this to be a fine strategy for local races, such as city and county and soforth.
Agreed- for the price of one prime time TV spot in this market you can buy over a thousand lawn signs. Located on well traveled streets those signs will make more impressions than that 30 second commercial, and you don't have to pay to repeat that commercial several times a day. For even better effect, put a couple of those lawn signs on an eye catching vehicle like a motorcycle with sidecar and run it up and down the main streets during rush hour. Unfortunately, most of the campaigns have chosen to assualt us with repetitive TV ads rather than cool looking vehicles... Then again, once in a great while a campaign does something outside the box like the 1990 Wellstone campaign and upsets the political apple cart.
That said, there are no competitive races in Minneapolis beyond the School Board which will be a runoff between DFLers. The republicans have never been weaker in Minneapolis, and even if the greens picked up the odd legislative seat or two they'd caucus with the DFLers anyway.
I really don't know that the presidential signs do a thing in Minneapolis, though someone may have an argument to the contrary since there are so darn many of them.
The Bush campaign took an early lead in the sign wars here, largely because the Kerry campaign thought TV ads a better waste of their campaign funds. To raise money for their "air war", the Kerry campaign tried selling signs, stickers, and buttons for at least double the price you could buy them at demstore.com and other sources. It's gotten to the point where even local DFL groups are doing an end run around the Kerry campaign and buying in volume from those internet sources, Meanwhile, the republican campaigns erred in the opposite direction, littering the countryside with 4 foot by 8 foot signs. These are more billboards than lawn signs, and the union printers get around a hundred dollars apiece for them in volume and the scab printers don't charge much if any less. Republicans by and large never being too up on the laws of physics, most of these campaign billboards are attached to nothing more substantial than two or three pieces of rebar driven a bit into the topsoil. I expect any day now to see a press release from the republican campaigns blaming DFLers for their signs now being somewhat less than vertical and none to readable at such odd angles. Of course, the guilty party for these half blown over signs is nothing more than our robust outstate breezes, another force of nature many republicans have difficulty comprehending.
Of course, with Kerry ahead in the polls here in Minnesota by 2-8% and tied nationwide both presidial campaigns would be better off putting their resources into Iowa or Wisconsin where Kerry has much narrower leads. Yet every day the deluge of TV ads continues, and the bit of twin cities TV signals that cross over into western Wisconsin don't justify the hefty TV ad rates here. Further evidence that the major party campaigns are not well run... assuming their only goal is to elect their candidate(s). One must remember that campaigning is a multi billion dollar business also, and one that clearly benefits from bountiful campaign spending even in areas where there is no real contest.
Suffice to say, my Kerry lawn signs have spent much of the last few months motoring about the 6th district, accompanied by DFL challenger Patty Wetterling's.
following the real races from Hawthorne,
Dyna Sluyter
REMINDERS:
1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait.
For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________
Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
