Some of the television ads in the New Jersey governor's race may look familiar to viewers with long memories.In the 1988 Pennsylvania treasurer's race between Democrat Catherine Baker Knoll and former U.S. Rep. Phil English, Knoll's campaign deliberately portrayed English as overweight.
"We were doing focus groups showing negative headlines about Phil," said Neil Oxman, who worked on Knoll's campaign. One woman saw a photo of English and said, "Is that him? Oooooh."
Oxman hired a still photographer and told him: "I want you to take the fattest pictures of this guy you can."
This year, in New Jersey, Democratic Gov. Corzine's campaign denies it is stressing Republican challenger Christopher J. Christie's weight in his ads, but analysts say it's pretty obvious that it is.
In a pair of television ads, Corzine questions Christie's ethics while running footage of him. In one, an announcer says Christie was "throwing his weight around" when he went the wrong way down a one-way street and did not get a ticket.
"It is not as subtle as perhaps they hoped it would be," said Sam Bradley, a Texas Tech University advertising professor who has studied the effects of political television ads.
"The videography focuses on portraying him as looking overweight with the camera focused on the midsection. There's a really huge fat prejudice that exists," he said. "It's pretty clear the words call into question the ethics but the visuals make him seem undisciplined and all the negative stereotypes that go with being overweight: lazy, slob, eat too much, no self control."
Though neither ad is running now, an almost daily stream of mail to voters shows the same unflattering images of Christie.
The Corzine campaign has "no interest in Christie's appearance," and relies on footage taken by trackers with video cameras who have been following Christie for months, said communications director Sean Darcy.