Senate Dems Pick Up Sixth Seat

With 92% of the votes counted, Jeff Merkley will win the Senate seat from Oregon. He leads Incumbent Sen. Gordon Smith by about 43,000 votes.

Obama for Merkley

Obama cuts an ad for Jeff Merkley. Let's see how Sen. Gordon Smith gets around this one.

Golf Clubs and Social Security

The DSCC puts out two new ads hitting Gordon Smith on Social Security. The one below is creative and very well done. The second one is more traditional, and a little boring. The race in Oregon is tight but Merkley has a good shot at unseating Smith.



(H/T: SSP)

Hall of Fame

Steve Novick is an unusual candidate and he ran some very unusual ads in the race for the Democratic nomination for the US Senate seat. He went on to lose narrowly to Jeff Merkley in the Democratic primary but I feature this ad mostly because it highlights the clever use of humor as a hook (pun intended) in political advertising.



And just in case you missed this piece in the bio that I linked to earlier, here's the story on the hook.

Novick was born with significant physical disabilities which include a missing left hand and missing fibula bones in his legs. As a result he uses a hook prosthesis and stands approximately 4'9" tall. His unusual physicality has prompted him to use the slogan "The Fighter with the Hard Left Hook." His levity about his physical stature has drawn both positive and negative reviews from the press.

The Scarlet Letter

Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR) knows that his party label is huge liability in Oregon and he's tried just about everything short of leaving the Republican party. One of Smith's ads features former Democratic state lawmakers. Another ad makes it seem like Obama was endorsing him. The third features John Kerry. Smith's latest ad portrays him as a maverick on Iraq.



Smith recently resigned as McCain's co-chair for Oregon although he was an early supporter of Sen. McCain's candidacy. He will also be absent from the Republican convention in St. Paul.

Time will tell if Oregon voters will overlook the "R" next Gordon Smith but the ads themselves are pretty well made. His Democratic challenger and the Speaker of the Oregon House, Jeff Merkeley might want to start highlighting Smith's election-year moderation before the narrative about Smith being a maverick gets any more established.