Dull vs. not dull: Politics of contrasts

In case you hadn’t noticed, the Primary election is next Tuesday. Of the four races for Congress and Senate, three of them are foregone conclusions … Mark Begich and Ethan Berkowitz will be the nominees on the D side, and Ted Stevens will romp home against the charismatically challenged Dave Cuddy and that International Man of Mystery Vic Vickers.

Which leaves the race between Don Young and Sean Parnell. Oh, right … and Gabrielle LeDoux.

No disrespect to Gabrielle, I know her and have worked with her before, but she ain’t gonna win this race (even though at this writing she’s got a dynamite new spot on TV). She will end up having an impact, though, because she’s taking anti-Don vote away from Parnell. If she gets 10 percent of the vote, and it looks like she will, I reckon her vote would split roughly 2:1 to Parnell … hitting him for 3 to 4 points when he can least afford it.

So Gabrielle’s one of Sean’s problems. The other is how he’s going to close the gap with Don, which in our last poll stood at about 5 to 6 points.

Here’s the contrast as I see it, and it’s just about as stark a contrast as you could possibly hope to see.

Don Young is a boor — he’s crude, arrogant and unbelievably out of touch with what’s required of public officials with respect to their dealings with the press and the public. Now, that’s not my opinion, that’s what a lot of people out there think. My personal and private interactions with him in the past have been quite different, but therein lies his problem … he’s wholly incapable of projecting the private Don, who can be quite delightful and charming, into the public arena.

But Don Young is also good at what he does. Being 1 out of 435 and still being effective requires two things … seniority and a certain, judiciously used amount of Don Young swagger. No matter what you think about him, whether you like him or not, I don’t think too many people out there would seriously question his ability to be effective. He’s been that way in the past, and will probably continue to be in the future, given the chance.

Sean Parnell is a smart, capable and attractive candidate. He’s had a successful political career, climbing the ladder steadily through the State House, the State Senate, and now as lieutenant governor. And he’s got the undoubtedly effective support of Gov. Sarah Palin, who even in the midst of Troopergate is still very, very popular. But Sean Parnell is also shockingly dull. Again, that’s not necessarily my opinion, that’s what people out there think. He’s a wallflower, a shrinking violet, painfully shy and reticent, and not very exciting or charismatic.

Now, Don’s a lot of things but dull isn’t one of them. But his great advantage in this race is that he can spin his very real faults as actually being strengths. He’s doing that very effectively in his advertising as we speak … “Some people say that Don Young is Too Much … yep, I think Don Young brings way too much money to Alaska.” It acknowledges his faults in passing, and segues them into positives.

Sean’s task is more difficult because you can’t spin dull. He’s making the mistake of trying to hide it instead. He hasn’t really appeared personally in any of his ads so far, and that hurts him … it makes it difficult for people to know who he really is, and it makes it difficult for him to convince people that he can be effective. In the end, he’s preferring to rely on Sarah Palin to speak for him. And that may be enough, but the mental image of him peering out from underneath Sarah’s skirt probably only reinforces the doubts people have about him.

So how does Sean Parnell win this race? He needs to show us what he’s made of. Even if it’s not the real you, Sean, shoot … advertising’s all about making chalk look like cheese.

Come out from under there and say something. I want to know you can be effective. I want to know you can do the job. I want to know you’re not going to get eaten alive. And convincing me of that needs to come out of your mouth.

And how does Don Young win? Well, it’s all about the perception of risk. Very often, the decision-making process that goes through people’s minds when they vote is predicated on evaluating who the bigger risk is. Don needs to pose the question … who’s the bigger risk, Don Young or Sean Parnell?

He needs to convince us it’s the untested and relatively unknown Parnell. That for all his ugly faults, Don Young is the known quantity, and oftentimes, at the end of the day, that’s what people value most.

Get out and vote on Tuesday.

Ivan Moore is an Anchorage pollster who runs Ivan Moore Research.