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Bowles' campaign headshot
In designing an effective and strategic campaign, the Democrat Erskine Bowles' 2004 campaign primarily considered his unique campaign history in North Carolina. This history credited Bowles' with some leftover name recognition from his loss in 2002, but also with the Dole campaign's characterization of Bowles as a "bespectacled policy wonk" (Savodnik, 2004). That characterization probably prompted Bowles, as he began campaigning in late May, to connect himself to a "common man" narrative (Steinhorn, 2004). He was "determined to portray himself as a man of the people" (Savodnik, 2004). He demonstrated this desire to connect to people through a 10-day, 40-stop North Carolina Bus Tour in July (Robertson, 2004). In the context of this conservative state, another well-planned theme Bowles consistently stressed was his bipartisanship. In various media he repeatedly promised to cross party lines, make "common sense" legislation and be an independent voice in the Senate (Cook, "NC Senate," 2004), i.e. "a different kind of Democrat" ("Own Man").
Bowles' campaign also had strategic shortfalls. Bowles did not thread his message around Clinton's administration carefully enough. He needed to build leadership credibility and stress bipartisanship by citing his experiences in the White House. Though probably a positive association for his Democratic base, Burr harped on Bowles' association with President Clinton's name and tax policies in TV ads in October, scaring more conservative undecideds. Bowles should have foreseen the potential damage of Clinton's name, especially in eastern North Carolina (Robertson, AP, 10/25). If he had, he could have innocculated himself somewhat by explicitly differences himself from Clinton and other Democrats earlier in his campaign.
Bowles' mostly followed a classic strategy (Faucheaux, 2002) in terms of message sequencing. Bowles spent the summer with positive ads about a stronger economy and his jobs plan. However in October Burr began an aggresive attack campaign, and Bowles' responded with negative ads, highlighting Burr's ties to special interests (Kinnard, "Burr Ignores," 2004). Bowles' then ended positive.
The negative shift and the pressure to respond effectively raised ethical dilemmas over the use of facts (Maisel, 2002). Concerning facts, a Bowles' campaign staffer sent an email, pressuring a federal laboratory employee to send confirmation about a claim about uranium that the campaign needed for a specific negative ad. The ad implied that "Burr voted in favor of exporting uranium for use in medical tests that could also be used by terrorists to make bombs when lower-grade uranium would serve the same medical purposes" (Johnson, 2004). Despite its distortions, according to Steinhorn, given the media context, the advertisement may not be ethically wrong because it reached voters while competing with other spectacular news (114). In addition, the Charlotte Observer identified the incident and the Burr campaign responded, bringing further information to voters on the issues.
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Created: 11/14/2004. Updated: 11/15/2004