Coming off a primary defeat last month, Berkshire DA Paul Caccaviello announced he would launch a write-in campaign in hopes of keeping his seat in November. WAMC takes a look at the challenges he’ll face.
Samantha Pettey is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts College Of Liberal Arts in North Adams. She says beyond the lack of party recognition, write-in candidates need to make a big impact on voters for them to go the distance of actually writing out their name.
“So often times, historically, one I’ve heard of is Senator Murkowski in Alaska, where her campaign came out with a little jingle to kind of spell out her name, and it was like to a familiar tune that people knew,” she told WAMC.
Pettey is referring to Senator Lisa Murkowski’s legendary 2010 run for re-election as an independent write-in campaign against Republican primary winner Joe Miller, a Tea Party member, and Democrat Scott McAdams. Murkowski’s campaign hired Alaskan advertising and public relations agency Brilliant Media Strategies to produce at least six ads for the race, two of which specifically addressed the demands of the write-in.
In the first, https://vimeo.com/21179499">a child takes to a spelling bee stage to spell Murkowski.
In the second, https://vimeo.com/21179452">a scientist carries out a test of Alaskans to prove that they can spell the name — which, if you’re listening at home, is spelled “M-U-R-K-O-W-S-K-I.”
In the end, Murkowski’s gambit worked, making her the second senator to win a race in such a manner in American history. The first was South Carolinian Republican Strom Thurmond in 1954.
“Well, I heard that it wasn’t super super local, but someone in the state of Massachusetts had recently done it,” continued Pettey.
“Folks not only had to get to the polls in a primary, which has traditionally had lower voter turnout, but then they had to do the Herculean thing of writing in my name," said Jo Comerford. She won the Democratic primary for state Senate for the Hampshire, Franklin, and Worcester District in early September as a write-in candidate.
“We tried to reach voters both with messages about how important their vote was, both about messages with regard to how much I cared about reaching voters and hearing from them and building a platform that really represented our district, but then also with fun, engaging tactics if you will that helped break down barriers or any kind of concern people might have to having to go to the polls and write in my name,” she told WAMC.
Comerford says her campaign made funny videos, graphics to share online, “and then actually we went so far as to ask https://vimeo.com/282785781">a wonderful singer-songwriter group, the Nields, Katyrna and Nerissa Nields, to write a song about it.”
But to date, it hasn’t attempted a jingle, opting for talking head-style interviews with the candidate and videos with stirring instrumentals over stock imagery.
November 6th will put Caccaviello’s write-in bid to the test as he faces Democratic primary winner Andrea Harrington in the general election. Harrington won the primary by 692 votes.
