Daytona Beach News-Journal: U.S. Senate candidate puts his name in a different kind of race
U.S. Senate hopeful Kendrick Meek announced he's in the race. Literally.
"I will be the lead sponsor of Mike Wallace's #01 race car at the NASCAR Nationwide Series Race on 2/13," he said Tuesday via Twitter. (I like to quote Twitter feeds; they keep politicians under 140 characters.)
It's rare for political candidates to sponsor racing cars. Mark Warner sponsored a truck in the NASCAR Craftsman Series during his successful 2001 campaign for Virginia governor. And Bob Graham famously sponsored a Ford truck in the Craftsman Series in 2003. But few, if any, other political candidates followed their lead.
Graham is a respected figure in Florida politics, but consultants aren't exactly falling over themselves finding ways to emulate the Graham for President campaign. His racing sponsorship often is cited as one of those cool-in-a-goofy-way moves for which Graham is known.
But the Meek campaign is in a position where it must get creative. Although he's the Democratic frontrunner, not many know of Meek outside Miami.
In a Quinnipiac University poll released last week, 72 percent of registered voters said they hadn't heard enough about Meek to have an opinion about him. This goes up to 86 percent among voters in Southwest Florida. Kids pictured on milk cartons have more name recognition.
To make matters worse, the Republican Senate primary race gets all the attention. Gov. Charlie Crist's transformation from prohibitive favorite to underdog running behind former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio is a dramatic story with national implications. People tend to forget the winner will have to face a Democrat.
So maybe this will help.
It's easy to see what's appealing about car sponsorship. Normal people don't read and believe campaign mailings. They tune out political television ads that clutter airwaves.
But hey, slap your name on a car and suddenly you have the field all to yourself.
Plus, at a time when people are sick of negative ads, distrustful of slick ads, yet dismissive of ads that don't look slick, why not provide a little entertainment? Something people can get behind. A team that's driving hard right here at the eastern end of the strategically vital Interstate 4 corridor.
People will cheer you on without ever wondering about your position on financial regulatory reform or cap-and-trade.
The Meek campaign even sees sponsorship as a kind of regional economic stimulus. "He knows the NASCAR family has been hurting and he wants to support NASCAR nation," said Meek's campaign manager Abe Dyk.
Meek also is raffling off a pit pass among people who contribute on his campaign Web site. "He wants to share the pit row experience . . . there's nothing like it," Dyk said.
But having an ad on a racing car is not without risks for a candidate. If your car does poorly, wise-guy commentators will go all metaphorical on you. You could end up reading about how your campaign is threatening to crash, spin out or coast into the pits, sputtering. This could follow you.
But this approach is still novel enough to be a surefire attention-getter, and it could reach the so-called "NASCAR dad" demographic where Democrats are said to be weak.
Besides, I don't know anybody who would rather watch a negative television ad than a race, so this just might work.