When Kids Attack: Campaign 2014′s Youngest Combatants
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Matt Bevin For Senate(WASHINGTON) — Kentucky U.S. Senate candidate Matt Bevin, who is challenging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, wants voters to know that his opponent is telling lies about him.
And in a new campaign ad out this week, Bevin lets his nine children do the talking.
“Mitch McConnell is telling a bunch of lies about my dad,” one of his daughters says directly into the camera in the 30-second spot. “Don’t be fooled.”
The ad amounts to a smiling montage of children in the Bevin family home who each offer testimonials about their father.
“Matt Bevin is my dad. He’ll make a great U.S. senator,” another one of his daughters adds, “and I should know, I’ve known him my whole life.”
With his wife and children — four of whom are adopted from Ethiopia — surrounding him, Bevin tells the audience he approves this message and “I approve these messengers too.”
In Montana, another U.S. Senate candidate has also given his kids a starring role in his campaign.
Rep. Steve Daines, R.-Mont., features his daughters, Annie and Caroline, in a recent campaign ad.
“Like me, dad went to Montana State. He majored in mechanical engineering,” Annie says in the ad just before Caroline chimes in: “Not like all those lawyers in Washington, D.C.”
Daines, himself, makes only a brief cameo, appearing in the final five seconds of the one-minute spot to tell voters he approves the message “because I wanted you to meet my daughters.”
Bevin and Daines are just the latest in a long line of American politicians who have sought to appeal to voters by enlisting youthful surrogates. But the tactic, which is now on full display during the 2014 midterm election cycle, leads to tricky questions about what role children should play in campaigns, if any, and the costs and benefits for politicians who choose to thrust kids into the spotlight.
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