The snark-free everyman

The best political ad of the season, which sounds like faint praise, reveals in Patrick Henry Hays an engaging personality and a solid public record.

John Brummett is blogging daily online.

While others come at you with hatefulness and snark, Hays changes the pace with ice cream, baseball and grandkids.

While others give you The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, he gives you Sheriff Andy and a bunch of Opies.

Hays' 30-second spot alone threatens to make the former 24-year mayor of North Little Rock, famously overlong and droning in his public speaking, a congressional contender as the Democratic nominee in the 2nd District.

French Hill, the banker and Republican nominee who asserts in his best commercial that he drives an old car, may need a jump-start.


Hays' ad is produced by Murphy Vogel Askew and Reilly, a media-consulting firm from Alexandria, Va.

The firm touts itself on its website as specializing in helping candidates with their underlying campaign need--meaning something that is "credible, memorable and yours--a story."

Hays' story is real. He is a nice fellow, an everyman, who cared about his hometown and led it for 24 years during a period of challenge and, in the end, growth and accomplishment.

North Little Rock lost population during those 24 years, but then regained it, along with new jobs.

In the end, Hays' tenure produced an arena, a baseball park, historic revitalization in the Argenta district and, well, a submarine, just to show a zany side.

Hays' friend Vince Insalaco, the state Democratic chairman, urged Hays into the race for that very narrative: As contrasted with the folks in Washington who had shut down the government, Hays had long made government work in North Little Rock.

What the Virginia firm did was package the story in a brisk 30-second presentation--one that inevitably relied on Hays' performing on camera in a likable way, an assignment on which the sonofagun delivered.

He steers a tugboat to say that as mayor he thought of every way imaginable to bring jobs to his city. He seems to be driving a big truck as he explains that he lured business by lessening regulations. He hops a ride on a piece of heavy construction equipment to remind viewers that Caterpillar expanded in his town. He serves ice cream to kids to make the point that smaller businesses came to town, too.

Then he escorts the grandkids into Dickey-Stephens Park for baseball and peanuts and crackerjacks.

To see that commercial immediately after one practically alleging that some politician or another ought to be in the penitentiary is to sense some sort of soothing chemical getting released in your brain. Life seems worth living again.

Hays would be perfectly content to put that commercial up against Hill's old clunker and go all the way to the election.

Alas, though, this race likely will soon prove a victim of Hays' success.

Because of this ad, and because of a big vote Hays may get in North Little Rock and indeed throughout Pulaski County, the Republicans will soon decide Hays poses a risk of taking this Republican seat.

So the national boys, the Republican Congressional Committee, will come on your screen with an attack ad based on some fee increase or utility-rate increase or other godless Obama-ism supposedly committed by Hays over those two dozen years.

Then the Democratic Congress-ional Campaign Committee will sense that Hays is a potential pickup if only it will help him with a commercial taking hide off this banker Hill.

By November 4 this race could be nothing more than hatefulness and snark as usual.

If I were Hays, I'd just keep airing the baseball, ice cream and grandkids. I'd maybe add a new tagline saying, "I approved this message because, whether I win or lose, I know two things: I did a good job as mayor and y'all need a break from the way the rest of 'em are being so hateful."

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John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial on 09/18/2014

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