Dole Ads Are Coming To Your TV Screen

By Brooks Jackson/CNN

WASHINGTON (May 31) -- Sen. Robert Dole is going on the air with campaign ads, finally.

A new Dole campaign ad describes the story of his life. "He was seriously wounded in combat," it says. "Paralyzed, he underwent nine operations."

After months of almost total TV silence, the Republican National Committee today started running ads heavily in more than a dozen states.

One spot is positive, one not. The negative ad says, in part, "To balance the budget we need to end wasteful Washington spending. Bill Clinton just can't do it."

Until now the campaign '96 air war has been almost all Clinton. One spot ties Dole to the unpopular House Speaker Newt Gingrich. "Dole-Gingrich," it says. "Deadlock. Gridlock. Shutdown."

There has been an estimated $15 million worth of ads calling Dole a Gingrich clone and a quitter, and praising Clinton as a welfare-reforming, budget-balancing, crime-fighting saviour of women, children and the elderly.

One Democratic ad declares what Clinton is for: "Head Start. Student loans. Toxic cleanup. Extra police."

Alex Castellanos, a GOP media consultant, said Clinton has had the airwaves to himself.

"The president has proven he can score if his opponent is not on the field," Castellanos said. "The president's run 10,000 political commercials and it's not even June yet. And clearly, it's helped him."

Nationally, Clinton's lead over Dole grew from 12 points in early March, about the time the ads began running heavily, to 20 points in the second week of May -- a gain for Clinton of eight points. His lead went from 54-42 percent to 58-38 percent, according to the CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll.

The Democratic ads ran heavily in 24 targeted states: California, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Maine.

And in some of them, Clinton's gains were even more dramatic. In Connecticut, there was a 26-point gain; in Ohio, 10 points; and in Illinois, a 14-point gain.

Carter Eskew, a Democratic media consultant, said the Clinton gains have been significant.

"I think that it's been missed by many people, it's sort of been under the radar," Eskew said. "They've been able to do this in key, targeted states outside the Beltway and suddenly, the Republicans have woken up in June and said, 'My God, the mountain is all the much higher to climb, so it's very significant."

When Dole hit the road after announcing he was quitting the Senate, Republicans claimed they were starting a $20 million ad campaign. But their ads were little more than video news releases.

One ran only 54 times, another only five times and one ridiculing Clinton's attempt to delay the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit never ran at all.

The real Republican effort is only now beginning. CNN has learned $5 million worth of Republican National Committee ads are set to run over the next few weeks in 18 states.

The targets: California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia.

"The good news is the election is not in June, it's in November," says RNC chair Haley Barbour. And Castellanos noted: "One thing we've seen over the years is that when you move numbers up in a survey real quick, they can come down just as fast."

With five months to the election, the race is hardly over. But there's no question Republicans are getting a late start and that's put Dole a lap behind.

This story originally appeared on CNN's "Inside Politics."

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