Engaging on Social Issues
In a year when almost every pollster in the nation was saying, “Only talk about jobs and the economy,” a significant portion of our paid communication never once mentioned jobs or the economy. We knew this was the way to win based on Quinn’s general election pollster Mark Mellman’s careful research. It all went back to our character and values-based media, which was about making Brady unacceptable to voters on key social issues like education investments and guns.
Our first ad in the Chicago area highlighted Brady’s vote to allow guns in or near schools. But it wasn’t just about guns. It was also about what type of person would take such a vote. To the Democratic base, the spot was about a candidate who seemed extreme—a candidate who didn’t seem to care about homicide or violence in the city. On another level, the spot was about the fact that Brady had a very different set of cultural values.
We reprised a variation of this ad in the final five days of the campaign, defining Brady on his vote against a ban on the sale of guns to convicted spouse and child abusers. Among women in the Chicago area, this tested as the top reason to cast a vote against Brady last November. But we didn’t want to run the ad in the general market. Instead, we blitzed all of the women’s programming on cable networks throughout the Chicago media market in the final five days with no response from our opponent. It was especially effective with persuadable women voters in suburban Cook County and the surrounding suburban “collar” counties—voters any Republican statewide candidate needs to win over to be victorious.
We closed with a positive spot, but even there we made sure to include key social issues. Direct-to-camera Quinn said, “I won’t cut our schools, I won’t cut our police and I won’t cut our veterans to give a tax break to the wealthy.”
Breaking the Rules
Outdated assumptions account for most campaign fatalities. But the Quinn campaign showed a willingness to break the rules. Despite being on the ropes, we stayed off the airwaves until the very end. And once we finally went up, we didn’t lead with our top-testing negative, nor did we combine multiple issues in every ad.
In many instances, we only bought cable in multiple downstate markets while our opponent was attacking us on broadcast television. We wanted to advertise more heavily in the Chicago area—where our voters lived. We took on social issues when everyone said all we should be talking about was jobs and the economy. We used innovative media strategy, blitzing women’s programming on Chicago cable stations in the final days, and targeting key African-American voters in downstate Illinois on cable programming. We didn’t run a heavy direct mail campaign in small communities.
We also refused to respond directly to all but one of Bill Brady’s attacks. And when we did respond, we did it calmly and firmly, linking our response ad directly to Pat Quinn’s values and character. We turned the response into a powerful positive statement, and our tracking polling showed that the ad turned the tide.
In the end, Real Clear Politics named Quinn’s victory as one of the biggest upsets in the country this past cycle—the only governor’s race to make the list. Governor Quinn never gave up and he had the courage to let us break the “rules,” when no one thought we had any chance of winning. Advice and counsel by the governor’s brother Tom was invaluable during the toughest decisions. We were also aided by the great team of Mark Mellman on polling, David Rosen on fundraising, Trish Hoppey and Hal Malchow on direct mail, and Dennis Gragert and Robert Dietz on research. Together with an incredible campaign staff, key supporters, a great campaign chairman, and a truly admirable candidate, we all pulled together to bring this one home.
Joe Slade White was the general election media consultant for Gov. Pat Quinn in 2010 and is the president of Joe Slade White & Company. Ben Nuckels was the general election campaign manager for Quinn. He is currently the vice president of Joe Slade White & Company. They can be reached at contact@joesladewhite.com
Comments
JD / Oct 14 2011
This article on Quinns campaign is true to a certain extent but Brady
dismissed Cook County almost entirely with his campaign tools. Had Brady spent the last ten days running around Chicago instead of southern Illinois where he had the vote clinched he should have garnered enough votes from the north side to win it. From his bus he should have hit the airwaves made short TV spots & rode around Chicago making short speeches & shaking hands. No one knew him well enough to cast a vote his way. Quinn was a household name in the north east although not very popular they held their nose & voted for him. My thoughts; Brady lost it more than Quinn squeaked by & fell in it.
Don Mann / Oct 21 2011
I think the huge field effort run by the state party in the city didnt hurt!!!
L.S. / Oct 22 2011
"Pat Quinn is a man of deep integrity and a skilled leader
No one, in either party in Illinois, would call Pat Quinn a skilled leader. He is not seen as a competent governor and is regularly pushed to the side while the much more skilled legislative leaders make the real decisions in state government. Integity, sure, skilled leader...really, no.
As for the "breaking the rules", Quinn campaign. The descriptions in this article serve as little more than a cheerleading piece by two consultants who are incorrectly tooting their own horn. The Quinn campaign was seen as so dysfunctional by the party and union leaders in Chicago and statewide that most literally stopped communicating with the central operation (run by Nuckels) and began working on their own or in small partnerships to save the Quinn operation from itself. Most notably, Quinn's most successful advertisement in terms of creating buzz was not done in-house, but rather by a downstate union. The ad featured a welder telling voters that Pat Quinn wasn't the greatest, but at least he was honest. It underscored Quinn's greatest strength in an authentic way that gave wavering Democrats and Independents a plausible reason to vote for Quinn. In Chicago, several African American legislators and local leaders ran their own GOTV operation seperate from the central campaign. The full story of this campaign is much more complicated than the one-sided advertisement above.