The Whitman for Governor campaign has started to air their 30 minute "infomercial" which clearly is being aired as an advertisement for Whitman’s campaign. The style of the advertisement is to place the candidate, Whitman, in a "townhall style" environment, where she is meeting new people (presumably the voter at home can empathize as someone also trying to get to know the candidate). There was a dust up a couple of months back during the taping of this event because everything is staged, and someone had a video camera and caught candid moments of the coaching of the "actors" (supporters) in the spot. I didn’t devote a whole lot of time to this back when it happened because I found it to be largely a non issue. Why would a candidate tape their own advertisement and do so in an unpredictable, dynamic environment? I don’t know anyone who films a campaign commercial, whether 30 seconds or 30 minutes, that doesn’t completely control every word said from front to end.
Okay, that said, the Poizner campaign put together a short web video (we try to bring all of these to you) that mocks the townhall as being fake. We here at FR central agree that it is a fake townhall. But we don’t understand the big deal. It’s a commercial, nothing more, nothing less.
The Whitman campaign needs to take the surge in the polls for Poizner seriously. But they don’t need to treat the accusations in this web video as such… Still, it’s fun to watch!