NRA may have to bag Election Day ads opposing Obama

RICHMOND

The National Rifle Association hopes to deliver anti-Barack Obama advertising blasts to thousands of doorsteps on Election Day.

The Fairfax-based gun lobby has contacted newspapers in Virginia and other battleground states about wrapping their home-delivered products on Nov. 4 in a plastic bag that is said to read: "Vote for Freedom... Defeat Obama."

That ad proposal was rejected by The Virginian-Pilot.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch leaders initially told employees that the paper intended to accept the ads, according to sources in the company.

But when contacted about it this week, the newspaper's strategic marketing director, Frazier Millner, said the Richmond newspaper "will not run the ad... for the NRA on Election Day or any other day."

NRA spokeswoman Rachel Parsons declined to discuss the plastic bags or media strategies other than to say the group uses "innovative means of getting our message out, in addition to traditional TV, radio and print ads."

"Those things will be visible in the coming weeks," Parsons said.

The NRA has endorsed Republican presidential nominee John McCain, and the group's political action committee has established the www.gunbanobama.com Web site, which say s Obama, a Democrat, "would be the most anti-gun president in American history."

This season, the group has sponsored print and video advertisements opposing Obama; anti-Obama independent expenditures by the NRA this cycle total $1.8 million, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

The Obama campaign describes NRA claims as false attacks that distort the Illinois senator's record as a supporter of Second Amendment rights.

Although the plastic sleeves are a somewhat unorthodox vehicle for political ads, this would not be the first time the NRA has used that tactic.

A similar technique was used by the gun lobby in Montana in 2006 to support a Republican seeking re-election to the U.S. Senate.

That year, The Associated Press reported, seven or eight Montana newspapers were draped in plastic covers expressing support for Sen. Conrad Burns in the days leading up to an election he ultimately lost.

The current plastic bag campaign is something of a departure for the NRA, which more often targets gun-owning voters with its political messages, said Brigham Young University political science professor Quin Monson.

"In the past, the NRA has been particularly effective about mobilizing their members and like-minded individuals," said Monson, assistant director of the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at the Utah school. "What they risk here is motivating someone who is for gun control to get out and vote for Obama."

The risk for a newspaper that runs the plastic bag ad, according to media ethicist Kelly McBride, is that it may give readers a reason to question its objectivity.

"If your wrap on Election Day is portraying one particular point of view, that's going to be pretty damaging to your credibility," said McBride, ethics group leader for the Poynter Institute, a school for professional journalists in St. Petersburg, Fla.

"I think it would be hard for voters, in that moment, to discern whether this is the paper's point of view or someone else's," she added. "You don't want to do something on Election Day that essentially alienates your readers."

Similar considerations factored into The Pilot's decision to reject the ad, said company business development manager Alan Levenstein.

Because it takes about six weeks to print the plastic bags, permitting a group with one view to purchase that space could deny a group with an opposing view a chance to buy the same space before the election, Levenstein said.

"We want to make sure that we provide equity for all sides, make sure that there is a level playing field," he said. "We want to make sure that we don't look, as a newspaper, that we're endorsing one viewpoint or another."

As a matter of policy, The Pilot would sell space to candidates and interest groups of all persuasions in its print pages, which unlike the plastic bags can accommodate multiple ads in one edition.

The NRA is hardly alone in the effort to deliver partisan messages to the voting public.

Scores of lobbying and issue-advocacy groups from across the political spectrum have spent advertising dollars to influence the outcome on Nov. 4.

"A lot of groups make ads," noted Jacob Neiheisel, deputy director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project, a nonpartisan academic research group based at the University of Wisconsin that tracks televised political ads.

In this cycle, ads from outside groups "have been relatively quiet," partly because of the cost to broadcast them, said Neiheisel, which may be one reason that special interests such as the NRA are "focusing on the ground war, where they can get a little more targeting."

Staff writer Warren Fiske contributed to this article

Julian Walker, (804) 697-1564, julian.walker@pilotonline.com