The on-air advertising blitz in the race for chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors has finally begun, less than four weeks until the election.
Current Chairman Gerry Connolly took to the airwaves this week with a $44,000 media buy that highlights what he called progress on schools, test scores, gangs and crime.
His Republican opponent, Gary Baise, doesn’t plan on being far behind.
Connolly, a Democrat who has been able to out-raise his opponent by more than four to one, has an undeniable advantage in reaching the county’s more than 600,000 registered voters before Nov. 6.
“We’re going to be going on every part of the county next week with a television buy, [but] it’s not going to be anything close to his,” said Baise, who expects to run a commercial on Fox and CNN focusing on the county’s traffic congestion.
Connolly’s ad, which ran throughout the week, opened with the declaration that “good things are happening here in Fairfax County.” He cites “record SAT scores and record graduation rates.”
“We put more cops on the street, we went after the gangs, we cut the gang-related crime rate by 32 percent and cut gang activity in half,” the chairman continued.
The Connolly campaign does not plan on going negative in its TV spots, said campaign manager James Walkinshaw.
“We’re really trying to present a positive upbeat tone, at the same time you see a lot of these other campaigns getting into the mud and getting into the rough and tumble of the negative stuff,” he said.
It’s a sharp contrast to Connolly’s strategy off the air, where he once told reporters that he, unlike his opponent, didn’t “shake down Indian casinos.” It was a reference to Baise’s honorary membership with the Council for Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, a group tied to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Connolly quickly backed off of the statement after being questioned.
