Going negative

Running against a black opponent, former Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt, Helms was trailing in the closing days of the election. The spot, which Castellanos produced on a Sunday and had on-air the next day, featured a white man sitting at a table, with the camera's focus on his hands, angrily crumpling up a job rejection notice, as a narrator says: "You needed that job and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota." Then the on-screen image of the rejection letter faded to a picture of Gantt, as the man's white hands, for a split second, appear to be crushing Gantt's head.

Helms won the election, and the "hands" ad was considered a key turning point. "A lot of people after the fact would say, 'That's horrible.' But it worked," says Krog.

Jamieson says that the subliminal, sleight of hand approach should be off-limits: "There should not be content in an ad that has meaning but that viewers are not completely aware of."

Bush's new Kerry attack ad, which some Arab-American groups say should be taken off the air, also flashes a controversial image loaded with negative meaning. In an ominous portion of the 30-second spot that warns voters about Kerry's opposition to the USA PATRIOT Act, the words "John Kerry's Plan" flash on-screen, while on the bottom a red box warns, "Weaken Fight Against Terrorists." There are also boxed images of three people -- a traveler, a man in a gas mask, and a sinister-looking olive-skinned man with bushy eyebrows peering into the camera. Bush campaign officials say the actor is supposed to represent a generic man, not a Mideasterner. But Arab-American officials insist the image is obviously playing on simmering, post-Sept. 11 mistrust. The ad "can only create fear and suspicion and should be changed immediately," says James Zogby, president of the Arab-American Institute in Washington.

Some of Castellanos' hard-hitting ads, however, have backfired and caused headaches for his clients. The same year as the Jeb Bush fiasco, Castellanos worked for Guy Milner, trying to unseat Georgia's sitting Democratic governor, Zell Miller. The key theme of the campaign was crime (Milner called for abolishing parole) and Castellanos produced an ad featuring Milner's daughter as she told a harrowing tale of the time her house was broken into and awakening to find a strange man at the foot of her bed. "It was heart-wrenching stuff," Miller's former advisor told Salon in 2000. "The only problem was that the incident happened in Nashville, Tenn., 15 years earlier, when Republican Lamar Alexander was governor. It was an incredibly negative, misleading ad."

Two years later Castellanos was fired from Helms' 1996 reelection campaign after he aired an unusually negative ad early on during the Democratic primary, tying two candidates to racial quotas and health benefits for homosexuals.

Late in the 1996 presidential race, Castellanos was hired by Sen. Bob Dole's floundering campaign. But the consultant, who wanted to air spots labeling Clinton a liar, clashed with the campaign officials and the candidate himself, who felt Castellanos' tactics were too caustic and disrespectful. One rejected ad featured images of Clinton set to the song, "You Cheated, You Lied."

Immediately following the election, Castellanos, who aired his complaints about Dole as a bad campaigner when interviewed on CNN, showcased his rejected commercials in public presentations and for the media. The move was considered to be in bad taste among many professionals, who insist the client calls the shots, not the consultant. Says one political consultant: "Our firm would never parade ads around in public that our client rejected."

In 1998, Castellanos produced ads for Bob Taft's race for governor in Ohio. One spot became the first gubernatorial commercial ever cited by the Ohio Elections Commission for lying. In fact, the commission found that the television ad lied twice about Taft's Democratic opponent. (The ruling meant Taft's campaign had broken the very election laws that he, as secretary of state, had pledged to enforce.) Yet another Taft campaign ad became the subject of an unprecedented temporary restraining order, issued so an Ohio judge could determine whether the commercial was a fraudulent misrepresentation. The judge eventually relented.

Then the "rats" ad appeared that nearly cost Bush the 2000 election. It aired at a moment when the candidate was falling behind as a result of Gore's post-convention bounce. Castellanos' ad slammed Gore's plan for prescription drugs for seniors. The word "bureaucrats" appeared onscreen in large white letters. Then as the frame changed, "RATS" was broken off and blown up on the screen for one-30th of a second. When the New York Times put the "rats" story on Page 1 in late September, the Bush campaign was thrown onto the defensive as Bush wrestled over the word subliminal, pronouncing it "subliminable." Castellanos unconvincingly denied he had inserted the word intentionally.

Even before the "rats" debacle, Bush spiked an earlier Castellanos-produced spot that included a video clip of Gore saying he'd never heard Clinton tell a lie. But the ad failed to disclose that the Gore clip was actually lifted from a 1994 interview, years before the Monica Lewinsky episode. Castellanos also goofed when he got the Republican National Committee to release a spot he made in September 2000 touting a new prescription drug plan the candidate was about to present. Bush, in fact, had no such plan. It was a Castellanos invention.

Time and again, Castellanos cannot seem to resist charging to the edge of acceptable behavior and sometimes over it. "If you don't understand where the line is, it will backfire," says Hickman. "Does [Castellanos] play near the line when he doesn't have to? Yeah."

Now, the Bush campaign will invest more money than ever before in a media onslaught. "We'll test the hypothesis that money matters," says Jamieson.

And that vast amount of money is about to be spun into negative TV ads by the Republicans' most notorious practitioner of the trade. Alex Castellanos is ready for his screen test.

Editor's note: This story has been corrected since its original publication.

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