Conlin Suffers Slings, Arrows of Advertising
The theme of Port commissioner Paige Miller's campaign to defeat incumbent city councilman Richard Conlin has been this: when it comes to transportation, Conlin flip-flops, he dillies, he dallies, he waffles, he wavers, he can't make up his mind. In other words, he's your average Seattleite (have you been at a four-way stop lately?)
The Miller campaign is, for better or worse, banking on the idea that Seattle voters will rebel against perceived indecisiveness. Trailing in the polls with only a few weeks before election day, they are emptying the campaign coffers on a television/web advertising campaign that ridicules Conlin's alleged position shifting.
The ads, which begin airing today, compare Conlin to Shakespeare's Hamlet, who was undecided about such vital issues as whether to kill himself (though, to be fair, he was unequivocal about his relationship with Yorick).
There's also a website (www.highwayhamlet.com), with a Pythonesque animation that portrays Conlin jabbering indecisively about the vital transportation issues of the day. It is mildly amusing, but, in the pantheon of political humor, it is no 1850 political satire of the Wilmot Proviso.
According to today's P-I, "Conlin called the ad an act of desperation by Miller's campaign and described it as 'too little too late.'"
