Gay Republican’s Final Ad Provides Break From the Campaign
Richard Tisei appears confident he will be the next congressman for Massachusetts’s 6th District.
Nowhere is that confidence more apparent than in Tisei’s closing cable ad of the campaign. Less than a week before Election Day, the out gay Republican has released an ad that makes no mention of his Democratic opponent, Rep. John Tierney, or of Tisei’s own record. Instead, it seeks to provide respite from the barrage of campaign ads.
The ad opens like any other with an image of Tisei stating that he approves this message, but then switches to footage of a waves gently breaking on a beach in Gloucester, Mass. You can hear seagulls and the sun appears to be rising, casting its light on a beach house perched on nearby rocks.
And for 30 seconds, that’s the ad.
“Because you need a break from all the campaign ads,” reads text at the bottom of the screen before a woman’s voice interjects at the end. “Aaahhh, that was nice,” she says as the ad ends.
In a heated race that has seen attacks from both sides, the ad is far from what voters in the state have been used to seeing, which appears to be the point.
“We thought we’d throw something that was a little avant garde out there,” Jennifer Drogus, a spokeswoman for Tisei’s campaign, told The New York Times. “Everybody gets inundated with political ads during the campaign season, so we just wanted to do something a little bit different.”
Tisei, a 26-year veteran of the Massachusetts State Legislature and a pro-choice Republican who supports marriage equality, has been polling tightly against Tierney, who has held his seat in the House of Representatives since 1997.
If Tisei is successful on Nov. 6, he will become the first out gay Republican elected to Congress as a non-incumbent and Massachusetts’s first Republican congressman in 15 years.
WATCH the ad here:
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