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Salazar's Message Strategy
Overall Theme:
- Presents himself as the representative for the common man
- Sense of community - "Salazar is one of us"
- Encourage people to come together, despite party identification, and do what is best for Colorado
Supportive Claims:
- Goal: appeal to voters in a GOP-leaning state
- Focuses on “traditional values, faith and his rural Hispanic heritage” (Kohler).
- Can appeal to both Republicans (traditional values) and Democrats
- Morals and background make Salazar the better candidate.
- Experience
- Popular Attorney General
- reelected for two terms
- Focus on topics that further his message:
- Education: more public funding & improvements
- Healthcare: more affordable for all classes
- Tax cuts: not just for millionaires
- Advertisements – primarily a “comparative appeals” tone (Maisel).
- “Agree”- economics: lists newspaper endorsements supporting Salazar over Coors.
- “Cone”- positive and personal: Salazar as “the Champion for People”
- mentions healthcare and education
- “Unbelievable”- Negative attack on Coors and his homeland security stances
- “That's experience money just can't buy” – personal attack
Evaluation:
Strategic Perspective:
- The essence of political strategy is to concentrate your greatest strength against the point of your opponents greatest weakness" (Faucheux)
- Did Salazar do what he needed to do to win the election?
- Appealing to the common citizen is a good way to attract voters from both parties
- Uses ethnicity to his advantage - Hispanics make up 17.1% of population in Colorado Colorado 2000 Census
- Limited public appearances with Kerry broadened his independent appeal.
- Advertisements put Coors in a negative light
- Coors not in touch with the needs of the people
- no experience
- big business, wealthy, what about the middle class?
Normative Perspective:
- “Campaigns must be open and honest about what a candidate stands for and what the opponent stands for – and then the voters can decide.” (Maisel).
- Based on ethic, Salazar presented himself well.
- Salazar’s two terms as Attorney General show that his past record is similar to his promises
- Salazar is not changing his beliefs to get elected.
- Advertisements with comparative appeals can seem negative, but they are not unethical.
- Salazar did not mislead voters with false information about Coors
- Negative attacks were present but had initially wanted a clean campaign:
- “The Salazar campaign issued a press release slamming Coors for breaking a promise to avoid negative ads ‘less than 96 hours after he re-committed to run a clean campaign’ at a Sept. 11 debate” (Kohler).
Tension with Perspectives?
- Salazar’s combination of strategy and ethics are balanced.
- Salazar’s negative campaigning has potential for conflict, but Coors changed the tactics of the campaign
- Salazar not ethically at fault
*Discussed this paper topic with Grayson Moore
Works Cited
Honor Code

Part of an Assignment for:
POL 318
© Davidson College, 2004, Department of Political Science, Davidson College, Davidson, NC 28035
Created by Laura E. Noyes (lanoyes@davidson.edu)
Created: 9/10/04. Last updated: 11/16/04.