first on a campaign we just got through with in november and then kind of talk about that for a second. >> u.s. supreme court will decide about health care, as it should. as attorney general, i'm using our courts to lock up simpson to? bought a yacht the same year he failed to pay his property taxes. $74,000 using the state plane, including 22 trips home. took a state-owned rv meant fos race. and then wrecked it. steve simpson. living it up at our expense. >> this is steve simpson. this is his yacht. the same year he bought his yacht, simpson failed to pay his property taxes. his taxes were so late, they put a lien on his house. "not in the budget." but buying a yacht was?

and as public safety commissioner, he took a pay raise, while cutting the state highway patrol budget. steve simpson. living it up at our expense. >> obviously this has a lot of negativity in it, as you can see. you know, in 18 years of doing this, for a couple of reasons. we have never had an opponent that had this many negatives on him. i have never seen this. it was like going into the campaiff folder, saying, okay, what do we want to use today? and it just kept going. now, what happens is, these commercials were based on information that we had put together at the beginning of the campaign. so, they were sent to the pollster, which the process -- politics is a defined process. so, our information goes to a pollster. they do their questions, they test it, they see what resonates best with voters and it goes to the media guys and they put their scripts together. i don't know if y

knapp or jay marlin, but these are the games that did those ads. the poll questions come back to us to look at, we check those and make sure they are accurate and they kind of jive with what we gave in the report and also, the skriments will come back to us, too, one last time before they are produced to make sure they are accurate. what you are doing is, taking a 200-page research report and distilling it into a 30 or 60-second spot, which is always amazing to me, because every word in those spots is a story onto itself. and you have to be so careful to make sure it's not getting distorted and it's not somehow lost in translation. now, these things that were on these two ads we already tested. we knew what we were going to use. but anybody who understands campaigns knows they are incredibly fluid. they are changing by the day. so, most of our work was done, you know, when these ads were produced. in july, like i said, this campaign, we just got through with in november.

in july, there was a newspaper article, kind of an obscure article from the mississippi gulch coast about a priest who had been murdered. and so we looked at that, said, you know, our guy used to be a judge on the coast. let's just, out of, you know, just check it out, see if there's any connection, maybe he had been arrested before. so, we go down there, we look at the records and it turns out that our judge, mr. simpson, had previously seen an individual, who killed the priest, he came before his court on a child molestation charge. he could have given him 14 years. that was the maximum. he gave him one, okay? so he gets out of jail. because he was out of jail, he had the opportunity to kill the catholic priest. this happened right in the middle of the campaign. so, you know, you hate to say this is like christmas, but you don't get these things very often.

you don't -- you don't get those willy hortons very often. so, we had that. and to just continue this story, we weren't going to use it because we had so much already and our candidate didn't -- was afraid of the blow-back of using this because we were talking about a murder. and we did have a lot of information already on this guy that we could use. two factors changed that. just so you guys know how these things go on and how they get on tv and it's not just some kind of willy nilly process. two factors changed that. number one, our candidate was and still is the only -- is the only state-wise democrat left in mississippi, okay? and this election year we were going through a lot of change. republicans were mounting an incredible campaign to take -- to take both houses. we were worried about that, because we didn't understand what the impact on our race was going to be, even though our guy, the incumbent, was very popular. most times with a popular incumbent, you don't have to do

this negative advertising. you can just run on your record. we were worried about that. that was one thing. and we had considered that. and then two weeks out from the election, i remember we got a call from a newspaper reporter asking us to respond to this incredibly outlandish charge against our candidate about misspending money that had absolutely no basis in fact to it. and i remember sitting in that campaign meeting and talking to everybody about it and finally the decision was made, you know what, let's just do this. and let's just make sure this is just over with. so two weeks out, i don't have that ad to show you, but we did produce an ad, talking about the catholic priest and our judge and we won with 62% of the vote and we also had 30% of the republican vote, which is pretty unheard of in a republican state like mississippi. so, the work we do ends up on

tv, without us, without -- we travel the country, we work on mainly congressional campaigns. we've worked on, you know, races and research projects from presidential to public school boards. without the things we do, you could still have, but you would have less documented factual information to go with. and our -- the way we operate, we don't give anything to a campaign that can't be documented. if we can't chase a piece of paper down and give it to them, it's useless to us. we talk to many people, many of them who you would consider just out there and somebody you wouldn't take cyril usely. some of them have good information. but even though they give us that information, if we can't go somewhere and support that with documentation, then, you know, you're not doing anybody a service and the blow-back from that can be worse than it would have been. , careful

in that. i'm going to turn it over to alan, because i know most people have questions about the crazy things we do. i want to leave some time for that. al oneas that has a segue to the current presidential campaign. >> yeah, when i'm listening to everybody talking about, you know, whether or not negative ads are good or bad thing, i realize, we're kind of outside the margin, in the margin, i guess, since that because our basic premise is that no one is fit to rule unless proven otherwise? that's sort of like what we do for a living. so, we -- our -- and we're kind of negative, by nature, i mean, michael gets on my nerves big time when we're traveling together and the feeling is mutual. this is just the way we roll. and so we go out there and we're looking for what's wrong. that's just what we do. and as we -- if any of you saw us on "the daily show," the last question jon asked us, who is beneath us, you know, in the

political hierarchy of negative campaigning? is and we were like, hmm? well, there were a couple of guys in a pick yum truck that were harassing us, followed us for two days. we didn't bring that up. we're pretty much the bottom level in that regard. it's just -- that's what we do. so, we are out there gathering this information, and so if you are running for office, we're just trying to see, yeah, we want to know your strengths, too, but we really want to know your weaknesses, because if you've got someone leading you, their strengths are great, but their weaknesses can be devastating. and so, we always look at everyone that way. we look at, you know, what have you done wrong, and like michael said, we look at our own candidates the same way. we don't win any popularity contests because of that. sometimes we see that our two, it's very disconcerting a campaign is that the guy threw a pipe bomb at a t wh he was inl

and he's your guy. that's happened to us. so, anyway, we --try looking fo things to put out there. and the reason we decided to write the book, it was really two reasons. one was, we had this vantage point that no one elseactl you ? these two guys roa a rented hun day looking for trouble. for political trouble. and we go everywhere. and we're in some little courthouse in kansas one day and then we're in washington the next and so we felt like we had a lot of really good stories to tell, really, which is why we r book, just -- you can imagine, over 18 years, wandering around the cotr scenes and politics. and the other reason is that we feel -- we look at these ads, someone made the statement earlier that it's not really our role to question, or the media's role to question whether there

was any truthfulness to these ads and that's one of the things that bothers us is -- it's fine to be negative, but you need to know, when you watch that ad, is there anything underlying it? and often, there isn't. that really distresses us, because the ads are so much, y h slicker and impressive. when weer with on fox news last week, they showed some ads and had us kind of critique them and the one that stuck with me was, it was just, i don't know what it was about, it was really impressive, though, and i was like, against the guy when it was over because i had these great graphics and really cool music and it was really an impressive ad but i had no idea if there was any underlying documentation. what we wanted to do with the book is show people, it is still possible to try to know what the truth is. and we're not trying to be lofty and put ourselves out there as,

you know, the finders of the truth. but well, that is what we do, really, and we want everybody to do it. we want everybody to question whether what they're being told has any factual documentatiodoc. this is an old ad, from 2004. we don't generally name names in the book, because we didn't think it was crucial. if it was some candidate for congress in 1998 got a dui, do you really need to know his name? the point for us was just to tell these stories about how the system works. and we didn't want to get into the position of trying to break it down to personalities, because that just wasn't our role. we gather the information we give to the campaign and they go out with it. but in this case, the guy was -- he was tied to some notoriously racist groups that had donated

money to his campaign and they had done some really weird things and it was pretty strong stuff and so the ad -- they ran the ad and it was in kansas. and they ran the ad and so even though you could figure it out, which is what happened, in the book, we never named him outright, well, then, a reader, actually, a couple of people figured out who he was and we hadn't really followed him lately. we tend to just go and do these things and we immerse ourselves in these campaigns for a period and then we move onto the next kill. that's just the nature of the job for us. so, we didn't realize that this guy was, from 2004, is now the secretary of state in kansas and is mitt romney's immigration adviser. so, when that came up, we were talking to a reporter at politico and we were like, you know, i think we should just tell somebody this because even

though we didn't make a point of naming this guy in the race, it kind of matters who he is now and so we put it out there and politico did an article about it and, you know, the guy had an opportunity to respond. anyway, this is what this ad is about that ran in 2004, if y'all can go ahead with it. >> why are kansas turning from kris kobach? look what is supporting him. people and groups typed to white sue prem twists. one even hired kobach. it's true. an extremist group hired him to file a frivolous lawsuit. now his campaign won't return the contributions. says "absolutely, we're going to keep it." kris kobach, wrong for mainstream kansans. >> i do love receiving the tag lines at the end. now when you don't see them, it kind of bothers me a little bit.

off belts are off about what's going to happen with the super pacs. and so, that's pretty much our -- i'd really rather open it up for questions now. you want us to sit over there? >> yeah, why don't you sit over there. >> is there dirt on everybody? have you looked into candidates and you report back saying, this guy or this woman is totally clean? >> there were two, i think. that we remember. that we remember. you know, everybody makes mistakes. and it -- in the higher you go in elected office, the more opportunities you have to make mistakes and the more scrutiny you're going to come under. so, it's not unusual that we find things on people. especially in congressional races. but every now and thenfind yome

nothing there. and, you know, that's -- even though we're very negative by nature, we're always thrilled by that. it kind of restores -- because, you know, we kind of dwell in all this negativity. it's nice to find somebody who is there to make the world a better place. it doesn't happen very often. >> when we hear about political opposition research, i think people tend to think of guys sifting through the trash of some candidate as opposed to the public record. but i'm sure it's -- i know it's a mix, but -- how do you -- wha spent, you know, combing through the record, when you say mistakes, maybe the mistake is supporting a program that cost taxpayer money to arguably bes wasted, but then make the mib take was something more in your personal life, what's the kind of balance there? >> you know, we're paid pretty well but not well enough to go through somebody's garbage. i don't want to get in there.

most of our days are spent -- theylo boring, sitting in a courthouse going through minutes of some, or city council minutes and just looking for that one little tidbit of information. you know, it's not -- it was discussed here earlier. it's not really the silver bu bullet that kills somebody, it's the shrapnel that adds up. we dig through records and we talk to people. alan, i remember, was one night found himself on the front porch of this guy's trailer on the north carolina/south carolina state line and the guy had a shotgun across his lap because he was worried that somebody was going to kill him for talking to us. you know, we talk to ex-wives, ex-anythings, really. they make some pretty good sources. but it's a combinational of those things. and again thoep you talk to somebody and have good information, if we can't back it up with documentation, then we really don't have much. >> and at a certain point in the

process, you mention that you hand off the information to a campaign and the advertising people. do you feel that -- do they come back to you, do you have sort of the right to sort of sign off on the end product or there 0 kaxs when you feel like something that you might have found got sort of exaggerated or blown out of proportion in the advertising that you see on the air? >> it varies. sometimes when we return in the report, they're done with us and we just move on. sometimes they will keep us close by and like michael mentioned earlier, where they will poll, they will run the poll questions by us and -- but it's rare that anyone says, shows us the ad and says, this is truthful or whatever. by that point, we really have usually moved on or they've, you know, but hopefully it's based on it. we have seen a couple of cases where something has come up, but you know, we're print journal ilss by training. and so, to us, when everything has to be distilled to 15 or 30

second sound bytes, we always cringe. there's so much more that needs to be told to put it into context. that's probably why they don't ask us about the ads. >> i can relate to that. let's take a question or two from the audience. here in the front row. >> elizabeth brownstein, retired historian writer. i spent a lot of my life researching for accuracy. do you people have a staff? do you have a morgue? do you use the internet? how many candidates do you work on at once? i'm just intrigued, the two of you might be doing all of this stuff. it seems incredible. >> we do mainly do it ourselves. and we've enjoyed doing that. because it allows us to go to these places where people are from. in general, we start off on the internet and we build a foundation. and it gives us a road map. but as you know, the internet is notoriously unreliable. so, we have to go to where these people are from.

and we go into their towns and we get the information we need and we're out before anybody really knows that we're there. however, the name of the book is "we're with nobody." and that came from two different, for two different reasons. number one, every time we go into a courthouse, we are raising red flags with a clerk or somebody who -- we're going to ask for tax records on an incumbent congressman. that's raising, you know, red flag right there. so the first question we always get is, who are you with? and our answer is, you know, we're not really with anybody. we're with us. the second reason is because, when we're doing this, we are -- we have to be extremely objective. we can't get caught up in the passion that most people get caught up in politics, because we have to research our guy with the same vigor we're doing his opponent or her opponent. so, if we are not objective and if we don't look at him with the same scrutiny, then, you know, we end up with a stilted report and it didn't do our campaign

any good. we do, you know, we'll do as many as 10 or 12 campaigns in a season. go to these places and work with them and, but you know, we're in and out pretty quick and, you know, after having done it for 18 years, you get it down toed kind of a science and you know what you're looking for, you know how to do it. but it changes. it's fluid. like everything. what are people upset about in a current environment? that's what we look for. a few years ago, worldcom and enron. we were looking at con try brugss from them. if an incumbent passed legislation to help giant corporations. so, it really, a lot of it depends on what people are upset about at the moment. jobs now, obviously. so, yeah. >> in the back? >> hi, my name is jonathan, i'm

independent. you mentioned that you two are pretty, oh, not, you deal in the muck of the issue and you mentioned that you are both pretty -- not bitter, but -- i can't -- >> not bitter. we enjoy it. >> you look at the dark side of everybody's past and you look at kind of the underbelly of the system. i'm wondering if you see -- is there a connection between kind of the increase in kind of looking, the negative advertising and people's perception of government bei being -- perception of government not working for them and kind of, you have this 9% congressional approval rating. do you see those two as connected or do you kind of think connecting the two kind of skips a whole other thing that's separate? >> well, michael may have something to say about that, too, but my answer would be, there's certainly a connection,

but is the connection -- is it only between negative advertising and voter dissatisfaction or is it just increasing knowledge about elected officials? whether it's from advertising or news reports or whatever? we just know everything about everybody now. and that's never pretty. and so, you know, i -- i don't think you can blame negative advertising alone for people's dissatisfaction with government. i think we just know a lot more and, you know, the old adage that, you know, you never eat sausage if you can see it being made. well, everybody sees it being made now, and so i think that's part of the reason everybody's a little disenchanted. >> let's take one last question for the segment, in the middle? two questions. the lady and then -- the two of you. >> i have a question for mike

and for alan. you can answer them at your own choosing. mike, you said that when you were in the midst of that campaign and you had a candidate you were working for, you were working for him and he came up with this terrible thing against him and you had a choice, you said you sat in on the campaign meetings. you could have responded by denying what was said against him and proving that it was wrong but you said, we'll pull out the dead priest thing, instead. i wonder how that comes to be, that you don't care about discrediting what was said and instead you pull out something even dirtier and worst. and alan, what concerns me the most about, i admire that you try to find truth behind what you do put out to your clients, because that's so important, but i'm concerned like in this newt gingrich thing that they said that he supported the one child policy in china, which today

jane said was totally untrue. is there no legislation, is there no board that has to be passed before these things have to come out, no retraction necessary to make such a broad, sweeping and damning statement as that and let it sit, and how come newt gingrich doesn't try to say something against it? >> well, i'll try to explain the realities of the political world here very quickly. we did challenge it and we did -- there was a story in the newspaper. but two things happened there, number one, the story is in the newspaper. so it's -- the guy's sitting on a witness stand and the attorney says, you know, did you ever rape your wife or something, even though it's not true, it's still out there. so, we still had this story in the newspaper. second thing is, as people who are in this business know, you're not going to get a fraction of the coverage in free media as you are on a television

commercial. you're just not going to. so, our fear, again, was the unknown. what was going to happen with this republican onslaught, that it was on its way. and at the end of the day, yeah, we did lose the house and the senate, the democrats did, so, we could have been in a lot of trouble, if we didn't -- if we didn't really -- and we didn't know what was happening. so, you know, at -- in a campaign, you want to leave all your cards on the table. you don't want to come back at the end of the day and get beat and said, man, if we had only done that, just do it, you know? that's the way -- and do it if it's true. do it if you can back it up. everything we had we could back up. so we felt good about it. >> and to answer the other question, you know, i thought this might come up in the discussion about, maybe we still have that ahead, oi'm not sure, discussion of commercial advertising and political advertising. there really is no mechanism for calling an elected official to

task for, or a campaign to task for uttering an untruth, essentially, you know? i mean,he freedom of speech. and so, you can't -- where as you would get sued for advertising if you did it commercially, you are protected in many, many ways to a much greater level in politics. this is frustrating to us, also, because just, you know, we want everybody to rely on the truth. but it doesn't always happen. and it's rare -- the media is, or the other campaign, are the most likely to call them to task for being untrue. there's nothing else to prevent it. >> and the last question? >> in terms of saying that you're with nobody, if you are researching for the opposition, aren't you really with somebody? >> well, we are, that's where our reports go. and our reports go to democrats. so, we do work for democrats. and we have worked for some republicans in elections, primaries when there was no

democrat, because we won't do that. go ahead. >> i was just going to ask, how do you wind up with this candidate versus that? are they choosing you, are they searching you out? >> the political universe is very small. you tend to work with the same people over and over again. work with the same pollsters, work with the same media guys, same campaign managers, they go from campaign to campaign until they reach a certain age and decide they want to do something different. so, yeah, we end up just -- a lot of word of mouth and working with the same people. >> great. well, thank you michael and alan. >> thank you very much. more now from the new americ on negative political advertising. up next, two advertising agency executives on how political commercials are different from other types of advertising.

we're now going to shift gears and talk about the commercial realm. this is entitled -- i'm very excited for this conversation. one note is greg, the primary xeefoicer, could not be with us here today. due to a last-minute situation in new york. but we have representing deutsche jayme muta who i was told is natively digital. so i'm very intrigued by that. i know you're a key part of the interactive division at deutsche. an advertising firm associated and represented clients such as

microsoft, pnc, and volkswagen and many others. we also have with us michael hughes who is the president of the martin agency. mike has been hailed by ad week as one of the nine best creative directors in america. his agency is one of the best creative agencies in the world according to ad week and many others. his firm's clients include geico, comcast, and walmart. i'm sure none of us have seen any geico ads recently. we'll play an ad or two, if we're ready, john, that are quite different from the others that we've seen today. >> hello, i'm a mac. >> and i'm a pc. we've got a little network going here and it was very easy to set up. >> we speak each other's language. >> we share an internet connection now -- who is this now? >> this is that new digital camera from japan. just came out.