The hands ad.

In my previous post I noted that Sen. Jesse Helms was a pioneer of negative TV attack ads, and that one of these, the hands ad, will always have its place in the history of campaign advertisements.

Helms was trailing in a tough re-election fight in 1990 against Harvey Gantt, the black former mayor of Charlotte. Late in the campaign Helms aired a television commercial which showed a pair of white hands crumpling up a piece of paper. "You needed that job, and you were the best qualified," the narrator said. "But they had to give it to a minority, because of a racial quota."

Mr. Helms went on to victory. (In addition to hiring, Helms also campaigned against what he described as liberal efforts to give unfair preference in education to racial minorities.)

The ad from YouTube.

I saw something today in Wikipedia that I have never heard nor read. It states that this ad was the brainchild of Dick Morris.