The dog had a lot of work to do.
He was co-starring in a political ad that had to showcase the candidates good-natured warmth. But the ad also needed to deflect an onslaught of racialized attacks without engaging them directly, and to convey to white voters in Georgia that the Black pastor who led Ebenezer Baptist Church could represent them, too.
Of course, Alvin the beagle couldnt have known any of that when he went for a walk with the Rev. Raphael Warnock last fall as a film crew captured their time together in a neighborhood outside Atlanta.
Tugging a puffer-vest-clad Mr. Warnock for an idealized suburban stroll bright sunshine, picket fencing, an American flag Alvin would appear in several of Mr. Warnocks commercials pushing back against his Republican opponent in the recent Georgia Senate runoffs.
In perhaps the best-known spot, Mr. Warnock, a Democrat, deposits a plastic baggie of Alvins droppings in the trash, likening it to his rivals increasingly caustic ads. The beagle barks in agreement, and as Mr. Warnock declares that we he and Alvin approve of the message, the dog takes a healthy lick of his goatee.
The entire ad screams that I am a Black candidate whom white people ought not be afraid of, said Hakeem Jefferson, a professor of political science at Stanford who studies race, stigma and politics in America.
On Wednesday, Mr. Warnock became the first Black senator ever from Georgia, after Democrats swept both the states Senate seats in the runoffs. The twin victories delivered Democratic control of the chamber and an enormous boost to President Biden and his chances to enact his agenda.
While there is no singular factor responsible for victories this narrow Mr. Warnock won by less than 100,000 votes out of roughly 4.5 million and the other new Democratic senator, Jon Ossoff, won by even less there is bipartisan agreement that the beagle played an outsize role in cutting through the clutter in two contests that broke every Senate spending record.
The puppy ad got people talking, said Brian C. Robinson, a Georgia-based Republican strategist. It made it harder to caricature him because they humanized him.
By the end of the campaign, Warnock aides saw dog references popping up in their internal polling, supporters hoisting up their own puppies at campaign rallies in solidarity and beagle-themed homemade signs staked into front yards. They even started selling Puppies 4 Warnock merchandise.
All of which would probably come as a surprise to Alvin. After all, he wasnt even Mr. Warnocks dog.
Ahead of the Nov. 3 election, two Republicans, Senator Kelly Loeffler and Representative Doug Collins, bloodied each other in a race to the right as they pledged fealty to President Trump.
Mr. Warnock was on a glide path to the runoffs and got a rare chance to air months of uninterrupted introductory ads about himself.
The 51-year-old pastor had proved a natural in front of the camera, and his campaign would film him speaking directly to the audience in a majority of their ads. But the Warnock team also knew that the pastors two decades of sometimes fiery language at the pulpit would be spliced into potentially devastating attacks.
Racial politics were inescapable. Mr. Warnock was not just a Black candidate but also the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, the spiritual home of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And political scientists and strategists emphasized that in facing Ms. Loeffler he confronted a unique challenge: running against a white woman in the South.
He knew he was going to be perceived as a highly racialized candidate, said Andra Gillespie, a professor of political science at Emory University in Georgia and the author of multiple books about race and politics. A key question for his campaign was, she said: Can you be racially transcendent and the pastor of arguably the most prominent Black church in America?
The beagle spots were the brainchild of Adam Magnus, the Warnock campaigns lead admaker, who wanted to find a way through humor to inoculate Mr. Warnock against explicit attacks and implicit ones. First he had to call the pastor. I want to make sure you like dogs, he recalled asking.
Mr. Warnock said he did he had owned dogs before (Comet, Cupid and Brenal all mutts), though not currently and was game for a puppy-themed spot. Next, Mr. Magnus had to cast a star pooch, which he eventually found from a Georgia supporter whom the campaign declined to name.
There has been some discussion that the beagle the kind of breed we psychologically associate with white people, as Dr. Jefferson put it was another subtle yet intentional effort to explode racial stereotypes. Mr. Magnus said the reality was more mundane: The dog needed to be very cute, somewhat relatable and he needed to be able to hold the dog.
A shot of Alvin in Mr. Warnocks arms would be the punchline.
Get ready Georgia, the negative attacks are coming, the candidate said, predicting smears about everything from eating pizza with a fork and knife to hating puppies.
And by the way, I love puppies, he added, cradling Alvin.
It was Mr. Warnocks opening ad of the runoffs, and it immediately went viral online.
Mr. Warnock is not the first candidate to proclaim a love of puppies in a pre-emptive act of political self-defense. Back in 2006, another Black candidate running for Senate in Maryland, Michael Steele, a Republican, ran an ad of his own saying, essentially, the exact same thing.
Mr. Steele, who said he was honored by the homage in the Warnock spot, said his campaign was not consciously thinking of racial bias when it produced his ad but he saw clear efforts from Mr. Warnocks campaign to disarm racial preconceptions. Hes making a statement in response to the president saying Black people are coming to your neighborhood, Mr. Steele said. We already live there.
The Warnock team knew the path to the Senate would require a complex and fragile multiracial coalition. The party needed to simultaneously mobilize Black voters at turnout levels close to those of a presidential election, while also appealing to suburban white voters who broke ranks with the G.O.P. in November to make Mr. Biden the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state since 1992.
There is a rough rule of thumb for Georgia Democrats to win: They need 30 percent of the electorate to be Black and to carry about 30 percent of the white vote.
If youre trying to make history in the South, and youre trying to elect an African-American pastor in an election which you know youre going to need white voters, then you need to do everything you can with your ad strategy to make white voters comfortable, said Chip Lake, a Republican strategist in Georgia who is white and worked for Mr. Collins.
Or, as Jessica Byrd, a Black Democratic strategist in Georgia, put it, I dont think Ive spent one day in the last five years not thinking about how white people will view Black candidates.
Dr. Gillespie and other political scientists call efforts to make Black candidates more acceptable to white voters deracialization, and Alvin the beagle is a case study in its success.
The whole point of deracialization isnt to rouse Black voters, Dr. Gillespie explained. Its to put white voters at ease. In Mr. Warnocks case, she noted, he did not avoid direct engagement on racial justice, as some past candidates have. He simply and cleverly added a puppy in suburbia to the mix.
Given the first beagle ads popularity, Mr. Magnus knew he would return to Alvin. But how? It had to be humorous, he decided, and it had to repeat the theme of dismissing Ms. Loefflers attacks, which included misleadingly quoting Mr. Warnock saying God damn America (he was quoting someone else) and her slashing him as a Marxist who celebrated anti-American hatred.
The second Alvin shoot, in the scene oozing Americana, lasted about four hours. And at one point it had Mr. Magnus squatting behind a tree to coax Alvin to turn on cue. And Alvin wasnt asked to contribute more than his on-camera performance: The baggie that got tossed into the trash was full of planting gravel.
They put the ad out right before Thanksgiving, reserving, among other programs, the annual National Dog Show.
Online, the beagle spot surged to three million views within hours, and five million in a day.
Republicans and Democrats in the state marveled at the ad campaigns effectiveness. I know a lot of people who did not vote for Raphael Warnock, but they didnt dislike him or despise him, Mr. Lake said.
Dr. Jefferson, the Stanford professor, said Mr. Warnocks sustained likability was all the more impressive considering that his opponent is tossing all this vitriolic dare I say racist criticism that aimed to highlight his Blackness and his otherness to Georgia voters. Mr. Warnock countered with this cute little dog and scenery that evoked a white aesthetic.
However unlikely it seems, Dr. Jefferson said, objects puffer vests, picket fences, beagles, suburbia have racial associations: Its the same thing as a pumpkin spice latte.
When the campaign commissioned its next poll after that ad, it included an open-ended question to gauge what voters thought about Mr. Warnock. Mike Bocian, the pollster, made a word cloud of the responses and could hardly believe the results.
I saw puppy and I saw dog and I saw poop, he said. This is crazy.
In the middle of the two most expensive Senate races in American history, Alvin had broken through.
The race remained knotted in internal polls until the end. But Mr. Bocian couldnt help note that Mr. Warnock had taken a two-point lead after being tied in their previous survey. You can never be sure of causality, his voice trailed off.
On Jan. 5, Mr. Warnock won by exactly two percentage points.
Democrats credited an array of factors as they swore in Mr. Warnock on Wednesday. Few believe they would have won without years of grass-roots organizing by Black leaders. Or without the feuding among Republicans stoked by Mr. Trump.
Alvin did make one appearance in the races final days to pull Mr. Warnock, in a beige zip-up sweater, across the finish line. As they strolled through another suburb, more dogs of all different breeds joined in.
It was symbolism for how he had run his entire campaign, Mr. Lake said. The Republican strategist, a proud dog lover himself, was stunned to learn Alvin was not Mr. Warnocks dog.
You could have fooled me! he shouted. It looked like he and that beagle had a bond!
Visit link:
How Alvin the Beagle Helped Usher In a Democratic Senate - The New York Times
- David Ditch: Uncle Sam is picking your pocket with high taxes Democrats want to raise them even higher - Fox News [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- 2020 Democrats are naming their fundraising 'bundlers' - Columbian.com - The Columbian [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- Democrats Sparred Over a Wine Cave Fund-Raiser. Its Billionaire Owner Isnt Pleased. - The New York Times [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- Education Spending: What Democratic Candidates Want vs. Reality, in Charts - Education Week [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- Democratic leadership should be afraid of McKayla Wilkes - The Week [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- Editorial: Democrats are pushing the right fix to a Trump tax law - San Francisco Chronicle [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- The biggest state feels the most excluded in the Democratic race - CNN [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- Illinois provides the Democrats with a Midwestern base: The Flyover - cleveland.com [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- Mike Bloomberg is trying to convince big-money Democratic donors that he can win in 2020, even though he isn't taking their money - CNBC [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- Wine Caves and Purity Tests in Democratic Politics - The New York Times [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- House GOP vows to use impeachment to cut into Democratic majority | TheHill - The Hill [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- Democrats Who Flipped Seats in 2018 Have a 2020 Playbook: Focus on Drug Costs - The New York Times [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- A decade of Obamacare: How health care went from wrecking to boosting Democrats - CNBC [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- Democrats need to accept these 3 truths to beat Trump in 2020 - CNBC [Last Updated On: December 27th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 27th, 2019]
- What if Democrats Tried Real Outreach? - The New York Times [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- Impeachment moved nobody but threatens trouble for Democrats | TheHill - The Hill [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- Top Democrats Say They Support the Iran DealBut Here's How They've Undermined It - In These Times [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- Democrats Future Is Moving Beyond the Rust Belt - The Atlantic [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- Why The Most Coveted Democratic Endorser In Iowa Isn't Picking Sides - NPR [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- He Was Cruising in a G.O.P. Primary. Then Trump Endorsed an Ex-Democrat. - The New York Times [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- The Odd Couples of the Democratic Party - The New York Times [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- Prominent House Republican Doug Collins walks back his insistence that Democrats are in love with terrorists - MarketWatch [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- The Weekly | Vetting the 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidates - The New York Times [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- 'Deeply disturbing': 'Gang of Eight' Democrats shocked by report on Russians hacking Burisma - Washington Examiner [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- Like, Ill Tune In When Theres Two Weeks Left: Why Trump Has a Huge Advantage Over Dems With Low-Information Voters - Vanity Fair [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- The Coalition of the Ascendant Rejects Candidates of Color - National Review [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- Whats on TV Tuesday: Leslie Jones and the Democratic Debate - The New York Times [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- Who will win New Hampshire? 5 top state Democrats dish on the state of play - POLITICO [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- Democrat Klobuchar on diversity and taking on Trump in the 2020 presidential race - Reuters [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- Democratic Party Leaders Are Mostly Sitting Out The Endorsement Race So Far - FiveThirtyEight [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- Twelve Democrats, three Republicans in U.S. presidential race - Reuters [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- 'It's a sad day': As Booker exits Democratic primary, a once-historic field gets less diverse - USA TODAY [Last Updated On: January 14th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 14th, 2020]
- Live Updates And Analysis: January Democratic Debate In Iowa - NPR [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Biden is the Democrats' 'only hope' to defeat Trump | TheHill - The Hill [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Why Andrew Yang Has Endured While Traditional Democratic Candidates Have Not - National Review [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Opinion | Winners and Losers of the Democratic Debate - The New York Times [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Tucker Carlson: Democrats want US to be more like California -- the state that's driving residents away - Fox News [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Meet the Democrats prosecuting Trump's impeachment - POLITICO [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Liberals make up the largest share of Democratic voters, but their growth has slowed in recent years - Pew Research Center [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Who Won The January Democratic Debate? - FiveThirtyEight [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- The War For The Democratic Party Will Destroy Lives, Change The US - The Federalist [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Hillary Clinton on whom she thinks 2020 Democratic voters should nominate - ABC News [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Democrats Take a Walk on the Mild Side - POLITICO [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Democrats should put an end to caucuses - Boston Herald [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Kimberley Strassel: Why is the 2020 Democratic primary field littered with the failed bids of woke candidates? - Fox News [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- DCCC: Democrats tout fundraising advantage in 2020 congressional elections - CBS News [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Oregon Democrats, Republican bristle over possibility of another GOP shutdown - OregonLive [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Democrats Should Be Worried About the Latino Vote - The Atlantic [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Woke doesnt win and other big surprises of Democrats 2020 race so far - New York Post [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Democratic lawmaker dismisses GOP lawsuit threat: 'Take your letter and shove it' | TheHill - The Hill [Last Updated On: January 18th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 18th, 2020]
- Cotton: Democrats are 'upset that their witnesses haven't said what they want them to say' | TheHill - The Hill [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- WATCH: Pistol Grips A 'Weapons Of War' Feature? Virginia Democrat Trying To Ban Guns Gives 6-Minute Speech, Gets EVERYTHING Wrong About Guns - The... [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- Tom Cotton: Democrats haven't proven impeachment case, don't need to 'prolong' things - Washington Times [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- What Chicagos Mayor Really Thinks About the Democratic Field - The Atlantic [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- Impeachment: Democrats reject witness swap in Trump trial - BBC News [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- Democrat House impeachment manager inadvertently admits what impeachment is actually about - TheBlaze [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- Poll Results Put Andrew Yang Back On The Democratic Debate Stage - NPR [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- 12 States Where Democrats Could Flip the Senate - The Nation [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- Facebook is worried about Democrats winning the presidential election - Axios [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- Democrats, Republicans tussle over witnesses as vote approaches | TheHill - The Hill [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- Democrats cry foul over Schiff backlash | TheHill - The Hill [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- 5 Things We Learned Interviewing 2020 Democrats (Again) - The New York Times [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- 'Didn't answer the second part of my question': Buttigieg grilled by anti-abortion Democrat - Washington Examiner [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- A Major Fear for Democrats: Will the Party Come Together by November? - The New York Times [Last Updated On: January 27th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 27th, 2020]
- Who Will Win the Democratic Primary? Our New Prediction Model Says - OZY [Last Updated On: February 3rd, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 3rd, 2020]
- Democrats' History Of Intimidating SCOTUS Justices Carries Over Into Impeachment - The Federalist [Last Updated On: February 3rd, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 3rd, 2020]
- Impeachment has proved the Democrats are no longer democrats - The Spectator USA [Last Updated On: February 3rd, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 3rd, 2020]
- As Other Democrats Feud, Bloomberg Hammers Trump on Health Care - The New York Times [Last Updated On: February 3rd, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 3rd, 2020]
- The Humbling of Democrats in Texas - The Atlantic [Last Updated On: February 3rd, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 3rd, 2020]
- 2020 Democrats Are Already Giving Up on Congress - The Atlantic [Last Updated On: February 3rd, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 3rd, 2020]
- Iowa Democrats fear losing first-in-the-nation status - POLITICO [Last Updated On: February 3rd, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 3rd, 2020]
- Chris Matthews expresses worries: Democrats 'need to find' candidate who can beat Trump | TheHill - The Hill [Last Updated On: February 3rd, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 3rd, 2020]
- Are the Democrats Completely Screwing This Up? - Rolling Stone [Last Updated On: February 3rd, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 3rd, 2020]
- House Democrat to bring Khashoggi's fiance to State of the Union | TheHill - The Hill [Last Updated On: February 3rd, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 3rd, 2020]
- Democrats Had a 2020 Vision. This Isnt Quite What They Expected. - The New York Times [Last Updated On: February 3rd, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 3rd, 2020]
- Democrats Counter Trump on Health Care and Condemn His Conduct - The New York Times [Last Updated On: February 10th, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 10th, 2020]
- Democratic senators press Amazon over injury rates | TheHill - The Hill [Last Updated On: February 10th, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 10th, 2020]
- James Carville Rages Over State of Dem Party: 'I'm Scared to Death!' - The Daily Beast [Last Updated On: February 10th, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 10th, 2020]
- As Democrats Try to Move On From the Caucus Chaos - The New York Times [Last Updated On: February 10th, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 10th, 2020]
- The Harrowing Chaos of the Democratic Primary - The New York Times [Last Updated On: February 10th, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 10th, 2020]