Case Study: Governor Steve Beshear

Kentucky

After unexpectedly defeating four other Democrats to win the primary without a runoff, we knew we were facing a damaged and vulnerable incumbent governor in Ernie Fletcher. But Fletcher was, nonetheless, a sitting governor with a reputation for being a smart and disciplined campaigner.

Our biggest worry was that the Fletcher campaign would attempt to damage Beshear by attacking him early in the campaign as being too liberal for Kentucky and not sharing Kentucky values. While we knew that voters were not thrilled with Fletcher, we also knew that, despite our primary win, most voters had no idea who Steve Beshear was and that we needed to fill in those blanks as quickly as possible and before the Fletcher campaign did it for us.

When we went on the air, Fletcher followed us. Instead of doing what we feared most, Fletcher ran a series of ads highlighting the "evils" of casino gambling. This was a critical moment in the campaign because we decided that we could ignore these attacks and continue to tell the Steve Beshear story and get our message out there. While Fletcher made the centerpiece of his reelection campaign Beshear's proposal to expand gaming in Kentucky, we ran ads highlighting Beshear's upbringing, his values, his family, his priorities. A story that we felt would ground Beshear and inoculate him against the values attacks we knew were coming.

As more and more voters got to know Beshear, they felt more comfortable with him and the Fletcher attacks rang hollow. When Fletcher finally changed tactics halfway through the campaign and attacked Beshear on a trumped up ethics issue, we pounced and hit back on Fletcher's hiring scandal and his indictment.

But the values attack never really came until the last few days of the campaign, and it took the form of phone calls, not television ads. By that point, it was too late.

Click here to read the Washington Post article on the Struble Eichenbaum victory in Kentucky.