"I LIKE NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNING"

Wayne Garcia, political consultant and writer for the Weekly Planet Tampa Bay, focuses this week on negative advertising in campaigns. This comes in the wake of candidates in at least a couple of primary races airing ads going in that direction.

Garcia actually writes that negative campaigning "is good for politics and helps people make decisions about their voting choices. It creates interest in campaigns where interest doesn't exist. It helps unseat incumbents who ought to be thrown out of office".

He notes that as a consultant, he "sweated out many campaigns trying to find the right way to express the candidate's brilliant but wonkish solution to, say, a lack of on-call ambulances. But it took almost no time at all to go negative".

And another interesting point:

"When prospective clients came into my consulting office and led off the conversation with "I won't go negative," I showed them the door. I would take a client with no money; but I wouldn't take one who wouldn't do what it sometimes takes to win".

If you think this is a recent thing, think again. Garcia reminds us that negative campaigning dates as far back as Abraham Lincoln's race for president.

The article is certainly worth a read. Wayne Garcia is one of the best political writers in the Tampa Bay region, as he's worked within the process and knows the nuances of politics here.