Election Mail by Madeleine Prescott

Campaign season has ended, and with it the incessant bombardment of campaign mailers. Some will miss the specks of glossy, vibrant paper in their mailboxes, while most will be relieved that they no longer will have to look into the cold, vacant stares of candidates trying to appear friendly. I saved all the fliers I received over the past few months and rated them in four ways:

Funniest attack ad:

“Some things get better with time” (arrow points to bottle of wine). “Some things get worse” (arrow points to an unflattering picture of an exhausted-looking Jim Knoblach). On the other side: a picture of spilled red wine with Knoblach’s face reflected in it.

This was by far the most ridiculous negative mailer sent to me. You are unlikely to read the bullet points highlighting why Jim is a bad candidate, but rather you are just expected to associate him with spilled wine and sadness.

Wordiest flier:

Steve Soyka wins this one. On the first page alone there are fourteen bullet points. It can be assumed that most people did not take the time to read it. Although, who am I to judge his campaign methods? He did win his election.

Cutest baby:

I’ve found that many flyers have pictures of candidates holding babies. To me it seems a plea of “I’m human and I care about kids, I promise!” Of all the babies gracing the lit, I would say the one pictured on Tarryl Clark’s was the cutest. The baby is adorably wearing a red checkered sweatshirt with his head just peeking out of the hood.

Worst positive ad:

Sometimes a flyer attempting to put a candidate in positive light backfires. My favorite example of this for the last campaign season is one endorsing Dan Wolgamott.

In the bottom corner there is a small picture of young Dan in a football jersey looking unfriendly and sporting an unadvisable and unfortunate haircut. It truly looks like a picture one would find in an attack ad.