Initiative Backers Produce TV Ad Calling for End to TV Ads

The Proposition 89 campaign has a new ad that probably won't get on TV very much, given the campaign's funding woes. But it's one of the slickest and most engaging political ads in California right now. Which is ironic, because the ad argues for a halt to the oleaginous, overly simplistic but sometimes engaging political ads that dominate the airwaves during election season.

Watch the ad here.

In this ad, the medium is the message. Rather than targeting corporate donations and their influence on politicians, it attacks television advertising funded by those donations. In essence, they want to clamp down on political speech — the wrong kind, of course. Prop. 89 would severely restrict donations to candidates and limit corporate donations for initiative campaigns to $10,000. That would presumably end advertising campaigns filled with lies and distortions.

Unless, of course, you are a trial lawyer, an Indian tribe or someone extremely wealthy. (Or all three!) As Dan Morain found out, the initiative backers say Prop. 89 would exempt those groups from the $10,000 cap on donations to initiatives. The ad is somewhat misleading because it implies that "rich politicians" would be muzzled. But people like movie producer Steve Bing — who is funding an oil-tax initiative with $40 million of his own money — would be free to run as many ads as they want for their own ballot measure campaigns. And Prop. 89 creates a $200 million pot of money for publicly financed candidates to access; that money could be used for ads filled with lies and distortions as well.

To their credit, the backers make fun of themselves by including their own pro-Prop. 89 ad in the montage as an example of the awful messages on TV.

The new Prop. 89 ad is produced by Bill Hillsman, who first gained national exposure for helping Paul Wellstone win office in Minnesota. Since then, he has worked for the likes of Gov. Jesse Ventura and Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman, whose campaign action figure sells for $20.