This video, from the CD 9 race in Maricopa County, is one of the weirdest campaign ads I’ve ever seen; it’s second only to the wacky “Demon Sheep” from Californian Carly Fiorina’s failed 2010 US Senate campaign in abject strangeness.
CD 9 candidate Republican Vernon Parker’s campaign went to a strange, LSD-tinged place with this ad, photoshopping his opponent, Kyrsten Sinema, as a dirty, paganistic, anti-American hippie. Check it out below.
The Phoenix New Times has a few things to say about it, of course:
From this ad, we can conclude that his Democratic opponent, Kyrsten Sinema, is running on flower power, she doesn’t like war, and toward the end of the ad, it’s said that Sinema has “promoted hatred” toward the U.S. of A.
“And perhaps the weirdest of all, Sinema participated in Pagan rituals, singing and spiraling during an anti-war protest,” the non-hippie narrator says in the ad.
If you watch cable television in the area, you’ve probably seen the similar ad from a pro-Parker political-action committee, which is set in outer space.
Like that ad, and most political ads, really, there are a few misleading things about the hippie ad.
When it says Sinema described herself as a “socialist,” she actually described herself as a “Prada socialist,” which she explained has to do with clothes and accessories, or something like that. Also, it’d be OK if she’s “too extreme for central Phoenix,” because that’s not where her district is.
Arizona politics are great, right?
[NOTE: The headline and story were edited to fix a misspelled name.]
This article appears in Oct 11-17, 2012.
Vernon Parker is as much of a coward as a Congressional candidate has been in Arizona in a LONG time.
I LOVE pagan hippies.
Makes me want to send her some money
I did send her some money.
This ad REALLY REALLY REALLY makes me want to vote for her, but I can’t because I’m not in her district. Maybe I’ll just have to engage in some of that rampant voter fraud the Repubes are so worried about.
Psychedelic hippies kick ass; and they also have the best weed. Also Kyrsten Sinema sounds like a cool place to watch bygone psychedelic films, not unlike The Loft during certain festivals.
As a pagan, this attack on our religious community as a way to slander a candidate really saddens me :/
Well Spike, on the bright side, CD 9 votes saw through Parker’s attempts at muddying up her character and voted her into office. Happy endings all around, it seems.