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The Truth Behind the Takubo Attack · Commentary - TJ Meadows

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This week we got our first real look at something
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: we all recognize but never quite get used to, dirty politics.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: An ad from the Mountaineer Conservative Coalition, a pack tied
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: to Senate President Randy Smith, takes aim at Knaw County
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Senator Tom Tacubo, and it paints him as someone who
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: supports biological males competing in girls' sports. That's simply not true.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Back in twenty twenty one, to Cubo voted against a
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: bill in that very issue, not because he supported boys
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: playing girls sports, but because the bill went further than
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: high school athletics and tried to regulate college sports as well.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: His argument, that's the domain of the NCAA and ultimately
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: the federal government, and more importantly, he worried that overreaching
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: would invite legal challenges and potentially put the entire law
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: at risk, even at the high school level. A nuance,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: a legal concern, the kind of detail that doesn't fit
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: neatly into a thirty second attack ad, and so it
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: gets stripped away, replaced with dark imagery, ominous music, and
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: a simple narrative. There's a villain, there's a threat, and
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: then there's just enough truth to make the rest feel believable.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Now here's where it gets interesting. These kinds of ads
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: don't usually move mountains. They don't flip huge numbers of voters,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: but they don't have to. They work on the margins.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: A few votes here, a few perceptions. They are just
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: enough to tip a close primary. And in West Virginia
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: that margin just got smaller. Independent voters locked out, which
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: means campaigns don't have to win over everyone, just a
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: narrow slice of registered Republicans, Republicans not yet decided on
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: the candidates. So the strategy becomes clear. Don't persuade broadly,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: target precisely, and if an issue like this resonates deeply
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: with that small group, well you test it again and
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: again and again. But here's the part. They don't control you,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: because voters still get the fine. And I'll say, you
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: can look past the production. You can ask questions, you
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: can demand context, and you can ask a very simple question,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: if this claim is so strong, why isn't the officeholder
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: behind it using his own name in the ad? Because
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: at the end of the day, attack ads only work
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: if you let them, and knowing West Virginians, I'm betting
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: it won't work.