A SUPER PAC SUPPORTING REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE JOHN KASICH RELEASED THIS VIDEO ACCUSING RIVAL TED CRUZ OF “LYING.” NEW DAY FOR AMERICA

“Demon Sheep,” meet “Nose.”

“Nose” is the latest ad from Fred Davis, the avant-garde GOP ad-maker who burst into the political public’s consciousness with his “Demon Sheep” ad in the 2010 California GOP Senate primary &mdash an ad that accused one of candidate Carly Fiorina’s opponents of being a liberal wolf in conservative sheep’s clothing on fiscal issues. In case you haven’t seen it, it’s below.

The new ad for a super PAC supporting John Kasich’s presidential bid borrows Donald Trump’s nickname for Cruz — “Lyin’ Ted” — and accuses him of lying about basically everything that comes out of his mouth, all while his nose grows and snakes around his neck multiple times.

It’s unsettling, creepy and provocative — three things Kasich’s long-shot presidential bid could probably do with more of. The candidate himself has avoided attacking his opponents much, but the super PAC is here to do his dirty work for him.

The ad is running in Wisconsin and has $500,000 behind it, according to New Day for America PAC. Kasich is running a distant third in Tuesday’s primary, according to most polling. Kasich will want a decent showing there, given the state’s Midwestern similarities to his home state of Ohio.

A super PAC supporting Republican presidential candidate John Kasich released this video accusing rival Ted Cruz of “lying.” NEW DAY FOR AMERICA

BOW, N.H. — It was a very good week for John Kasich in New Hampshire.

Largely forgotten in the nationwide presidential race, the Ohio governor almost got kicked off the main stage at the most recent GOP debate. But a series of recent polls now rank Kasich second or third behind Republican front-runner Donald Trump in the Granite State, a feat he achieved after months of methodical campaigning here.

The sudden uptick drew the attention of a multimillion-dollar super PAC supporting Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign, which unloaded a new attack ad on Thursday that faults Kasich for expanding Medicaid in Ohio and for voting as a congressman to cut military spending that forced the closure of a New Hampshire military base.

In response, a super PAC backing Kasich produced an ad that literally slings mud onto a likeness of Bush and calls the former Florida governor unpresidential. The Kasich campaign also released a Web video Friday mocking Bush’s record as Florida governor, claiming he raised fees on doctors’ visits for poor children, increased college tuition and hiked the cost of owning a pet snake.

Amid the sniping, though, Kasich has mostly been striving to keep it clean and nonpartisan in a state that demands intimate retail campaigning — and where voters like to hear lines such as the ones he delivered this week.

“I happen to be a Republican, but so what?” he said during an appearance at a logistics company here in Bow. “The Republican Party is my vehicle, not my master.”

Earlier, at a town hall in Concord, N.H., he told a crowd of about 80 people: “We don’t get energy by being negative. I am so tired of my colleagues out here on the stage spending all their time talking about Barack Obama. His term is over!”

That message stands in stark contrast with his GOP establishment-friendly rivals — Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) — all of whom are statistically tied with Kasich in recent surveys here but deliver a more partisan message overall on the trail. Taking note of that contrast, four New Hampshire newspapers bucked the ­better-known candidates and endorsed Kasich this week.

As he builds support here, Kasich (pronounced “kay-sick,” but voters here often say “kay-sitch”) is airing a television ad that resembles a sales pitch for pickup trucks or beer — a biographical message that tells Americans to “never give up” and stands out on airwaves flooded with attack ads. His team claims that they’ve had more direct contact with voters than anyone else — a statement that almost every campaign makes at some point. But the governor has hosted more than 60 town-hall-style events across the state, which is more than his opponents.

[John Kasich has a novel pitch to voters: He’s a politician]

At the logistics company in Bow, he hung out with mostly working-class, middle-aged employees, making fun of their ­bosses and fielding questions about veterans and corporate taxes. Dressed in a blue pullover sweater, white button-down shirt and gray slacks, the governor detailed a rundown of his biography, including winning a seat in Congress, two terms as Ohio governor and hosting a Fox News talk show.

“And you know what? I ain’t that good,” he said. “You know what happened? The Lord has put His hand on me for some reason. He’s got His hand on everybody in this room, if you let them. And everybody in this room was made special. . . . This isn’t a political speech — it’s a life talk.”

Kasich “reminds me a little bit of Ronald Reagan,” said Bill Meisel, 50, who sat in the front row listening to the governor. “He’s focused on changing Americans’ feelings of America.” For now, Meisel said Kasich is “one of two” candidates he’s considering. The other is Bush, whom he hasn’t seen yet.

Fergus Cullen, a former state GOP chairman who attended more than 20 public events hosted by candidates before making an endorsement, gave his support to Kasich on Thursday.

“I’m sensitive to the fact that he’s from a swing state,” Cullen said. “We’ve got a bunch of candidates who are only talking to base Republican voters and are used to in their careers only talking to base Republican voters. That’s not Kasich’s background.”

Ultimately, Kasich will need to rely on a mix of establishment Republicans such as Cullen and independent voters who can vote in New Hampshire party primaries. Roughly 44 percent of the New Hampshire electorate, independents are increasingly being wooed by Kasich, Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, the senator from neighboring Vermont.

A New Hampshire poll released Thursday by Boston radio station WBUR found that Kasich is the Republican presidential candidate that independent voters prefer. And he’s the only candidate besides Sanders that independents view favorably overall. The survey also found that Kasich is statistically tied with Trump among independents, 19 percent to 20 percent.

Former Republican senator John Sununu, who served with Kasich in the House in the 1990s, said that the governor’s pitch should seem familiar to many New Hampshire voters.

“His presence and approach to town hall meetings is probably a bit more like that of John McCain,” he said. “His chief executive experience and the confidence that inspires is probably a little bit more like a Mitt Romney. His optimistic vision is probably a little bit more like Ronald Reagan.”

McCain, Romney and Reagan all won the New Hampshire Republican primary.

How Kasich could capi­tal­ize on a win in New Hampshire is less certain, and he is still polling in the low single digits in Iowa, South Carolina and national surveys of Republicans. Unlike Trump, Rubio, Bush and Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), who have hefty operations already running in states with later contests, Kasich has little presence anywhere else.

That’s where friends like Trent Lott come into play. The former Senate majority leader has reactivated his political operation in Mississippi to help Kasich prepare for the Magnolia State’s GOP primary on March 8. Kasich’s team hopes to do well in New Hampshire and survive until the winner-take-all primary in Ohio on March 15. At the least, they figure that winning his home state’s 66 Republican delegates could make him a kingmaker at a brokered convention.

Then there’s the Kasich super PAC, New Day America, which has spent roughly $5.53 million to date and has been reaching out to New Hampshire voters since October, according to a spokeswoman. The PAC has six offices across New Hampshire and employs 17 full-time staffers in the state. That’s far fewer than Bush’s team but more than other rivals.

In Concord, Kasich marveled at all the media attention and how his campaign has “risen from obscurity now to second place.”

“If I win, great,” he said. “If I don’t win, I got another crusade somewhere else.”

Read the original story at The Washington Post.

SCOTT CLEMENT AND ANU NARAYANSWAMY IN WASHINGTON CONTRIBUTED TO THIS REPORT.

Gov. John Kasich (R) has tapped a pair of veteran Republicans to play senior roles in his upcoming presidential campaign, according to multiple sources. The decisions are the latest steps in preparation for a formal announcement of candidacy that will come sometime next month.

Kasich has picked John Weaver, a former top adviser in the presidential campaigns of Arizona Sen. John McCain, to fill the role of senior strategist. The Texas-based Weaver will oversee the general strategic direction of the Kasich campaign.

Meanwhile, Fred Davis, a California-based ad maker, will assume the duties as lead media consultant for Kasich’s super PAC. He too worked for McCain’s 2008 campaign. Davis and Weaver both worked in behalf of former Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr. in the 2012 campaign.

Kasich was drawn to Weaver and Davis in part because of the work they did previously for another Midwestern Republican governor, Michigan’s Rick Snyder, according to one knowledgeable Republican.

Weaver is a hard-charging strategist who does not shy away from the rigors of a tough campaign. Davis is known as one of the most creative and sometimes offbeat ad makers in the Republican Party. Both have been through controversies in past campaigns.

In a message Tuesday night, Weaver described Kasich as a “conservative problem solver,” adding, “John Kasich is a proven winner, at the ballot box and in tackling the tough problems facing America. If he chooses to move forward, I will work my guts out to help him and am proud to be part of a great team already with him.”

The hiring of Weaver and Davis, along with the previously announced recruitment of pollster Linda DiVall, provides Kasich with experienced hands atop his campaign operation. The three will work with a team of longtime Kasich advisers who have been building an organization for many weeks.

Kasich has spent the past several months touring the early states, testing receptivity to his message, and has been in California, New York and elsewhere assessing whether he can raise the necessary money to run a competitive campaign in a crowded GOP field.

Aides said two weeks ago that they had set a series of financial targets and expected to meet or better them by the end of the month. The hiring of Weaver and Davis, who have been in talks for several weeks about senior roles, is the latest sign that Kasich is on track for his announcement next month.

The Ohio governor won reelection by an overwhelming margin last fall. He previously served for 18 years in the House, where he was chairman of the Budget Committee and helped bring about the first balanced budgets in a generation.

Kasich is a fiscal conservative who prides himself on projecting a different image for his party. He will join a field of candidates that already includes a large crop of current and former governors, including former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

Unlike Bush and Walker, Kasich is far down in the pack, according to early polls. His advisers expect that his announcement will begin to boost his standing.

Former Dollar General CEO David Perdue surprised the political world on Tuesday night, eking out a win over establishment favorite Rep. Jack Kingston for the Republican Senate nod in Georgia.

The key to that victory was how Perdue effectively leveraged his outsider status—this is his first run for elected office—to capitalize on the public’s distaste with business as usual in Washington. And that all began with his first TV ad—called “The Outsider.”

U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman (R) has sent a resignation letter to President Barack Obama in possible preparation for a presidential bid against his boss. He will step down from his post in April.

Huntsman submitted his resignation late Monday, a senior administration official said. His resignation will take effect on April 30, giving the administration barely three months to name — and get confirmed – an ambassador to one of the most critical postings in the world.

Administration officials expressed chagrin at Huntman’s change of heart, but said they were doubtful he could make a successful run at the presidency. They chalked much of his aspirations up to the wishful thinking of adviser John Weaver, and dismissed the idea that there is suddenly a market for centrists such as Huntsman after the tea party sweep of 2010.

“It’s hard to imagine a massive moderate reaction that will give birth to Huntsman,” one senior administration official said Monday.

Huntsman began laying his plans in private many months ago, spreading the word that he hoped to leave China and using multiple opportunities to forge connections with national political reporters.

As far back as November of 2009, when the White House press corps accompanied Obama on a trip to Beijing and Shanghai, Huntsman made himself unusually available for comment – so much so that he raised eyebrows among White House and State Department officials more accustomed to keeping reporters at bay.

When rumors first surfaced that Huntsman was buying a house in the DC area and contemplating a presidential bid late last year, senior White House officials said they had not been given any inkling of the move by Huntsman himself.

But, allies of Huntsman have been steadily building a campaign operation that includes Weaver as well as longtime media guru Fred Davis as well as several operatives in early states like New Hampshire and South Carolina.

He will be a difficult figure to replace. Fluent in Mandarin, with significant stature in the region, he has played an important role in US China policy as Obama has sought to make the United States more competitive and to build a business alliance with Beijing.

Fred Davis injects Hollywood glamour, and a dose of the bizarre, into the staid, paint-by-numbers formula of campaign advertisements. He has created popular, and effective, ads for such high-profile Republicans as Sen. John McCain, Carly Fiorina and his uncle, Sen. Jim Inhofe.

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Creepy or genius?

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper (D) is out with a new ad in his bid for the state’s open governorship that perfectly captures the anti-politician sentiment coursing through the electorate.

“I’m John Hickenlooper and I guess I’m not a very good politician because I can’t stand negative ads,” says Hickenlooper as he climbs into a shower with a business suit on. “Every time I see one, I feel like I need to take a shower.” (Cue the shower head spraying Hickenlooper in the face.)

The remainder of the 30-second ad, which is running statewide in Colorado and was produced by Democratic media consultants Mark Putnam and Steve Murphy, shows Hickenlooper climbing in and out of the shower — fully clothed! — while explaining why he won’t run any negative ads in his race this fall.

“Pitting one group against another or one part of Colorado against another doesn’t help anyone,” Hickenlooper says at the ad’s conclusion. “And, besides, we need the water.”

The commercial’s imagery virtually ensures it will stand out from the scads of other ads — political and otherwise — on the Colorado airwaves. And, its message — “politics stinks and I want to fix it” — is pitch perfect for an electorate ready to believe the worst about their politicians. (Plus, who doesn’t think a grown man taking a shower in a suit is funny?)

While the ad is creative and effective, there are a few mitigating factors that suggest it may be tough for other “outsider” candidates to copy it in their own races.

First and most importantly, the Colorado Republican Party has imploded in recent weeks.
Former Rep. Scott McInnis, long touted as the party’s strongest nominee, watched his political stock plummet in the wake of plagiarism charges. That left room for little known Dan Maes, himself struggling under campaign finance fine, to oust McInnis in the Aug. 10 primary.

With Maes as the nominee, it’s hard to imagine the Republican Governors Association spending any money on the race and it’s equally difficult to see Maes raising the sort of money on his own to compete with Hickenlooper.

That financial mismatch means that the race isn’t much of a race and Hickenlooper’s pledge of no negative ads is somewhat penalty-free. He gets the benefit of looking like a different sort of politician without running the risk of losing the race to a better funded — and better known — Republican who goes negative.

Second, Hickenlooper’s background — he was a geologist and then founded the Wynkoop Brewing Company in the late 1980s — allows him to sell the quirkiness of the ad with ease. In the hands of a stiffer, more traditional politician, an ad like this one could come across as hokey at best and phony at worst.

Caveats aside, Hickenlooper’s ad has surged to the top of the Fix’s list for best positive campaign commercials this cycle. (The best negative ad to date? Doesn’t it have to be “J.D. Huckster”?) And, it provides a broad thematic blueprint of what to say and how to say it for candidates — incumbents and challengers alike — dealing with a very volatile electorate.

At this weekend’s Republican convention in California, former Hewlett Packard Executive Carly Fiorina unveiled a nearly eight-minute video portraying Sen. Barbara Boxer (D) as a blimp.

Yup, you read that right. A blimp.

The video is the latest offering from California-based media consultant Fred Davis — a man who, by his own admission, marches to the beat of a different drummer.

“The initial impact is ‘Fred’s insane’,” said Davis of his web videos in an interview with the Fix earlier today. “But, it sticks around.”

Davis knows of what he speaks. Back in 1998, he and his firm — Strategic Perception — posted a web video portraying then Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes (D) as a giant rat, marauding across the Peach State.

People laughed (who wouldn’t?) but the image of an imperious Barnes stuck and little known state Sen. Sonny Perdue (Davis’ client) catapulted to the most shocking upset of the 1998 2002 election.

So influential was the “King Roy” web video that more than a decade later it lingers in the Georgia political scene. With Barnes running for governor again in 2010, state Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine, who is seeking the Republican gubernatorial nod, posted a video entitled “The Ox vs King Roy the Rat“.

(One of the great “missing links” on You Tube is that there is no copy of the “King Roy” video. Or at least none that we could find.)

The lesson Davis took from the “King Roy” success was “you have to get attention first,” he said, adding: “If you don’t get [voters’] attention why the hell are you spending a dime?”

While Davis has had his fair share of hits with this oddball approach — “King Roy”, the “Hair” ads in the Illinois governor’s race — he’s also swung and missed too.

In 2008, Davis produced a web video for Texas Sen. John Cornyn, which ran only at the state party convention, that portrayed the Republican incumbent as a rough and tough cowboy named “Big, bad John” — and also featured a sort of spoken-word, rhyming sound track. (If you haven’t ever seen it, watch it. Immediately.)

The video, which Davis said he never thought would be seen by anyone outside of the convention hall, went viral — and not in a good way for Cornyn. While the web video didn’t help Cornyn, there’s little evidence it hurt him in a meaningful way either as he was re-elected by 12 points in November 2008.

(Davis also does plenty of more traditional ads. He was the lead ad guy for Sen. John McCain‘s 2008 presidential race, worked on President George W. Bush‘s 2004 re-election bid and handles media for a passel of U.S. Senators and governors.)

Davis, unbowed by the Cornyn controversy, went even bigger (and stranger) with a web ad for Fiorina earlier this year picturing former Rep. Tom Campbell, one of Fiorina’s Senate primary opponents, as a wolf’s in sheep clothing — literally. And, as an added bonus, the sheep’s eyes turned a demonic red in the video.

The “Demon Sheep” video became instantly famous/infamous online with more than 720,000 views on You Tube as of press time.

While Davis insisted that the press regarding “Demon Sheep” wasn’t entirely negative, he acknowledged that the “demon sheep got demonized to such an extent” that the campaign decided to skip a planned video that would have served as “intermediary step” between it and the Boxer blimp video.

Davis argued that the Boxer blimp video was a long calculated move — he said he presented it to the campaign last October — aimed at “encapsulating in one place exactly how we want the race to be perceived.”

The method behind Davis’ (perceived) madness? That television ads in California are stunningly expensive — $4-5 million a week — and, short of spending those sorts of sums, the best way to get voters’ attention is via these admittedly odd videos.

“People see them,” said Davis. “That’s what it boils down to.”

For our money, the best ads we’ve seen so far in the 2010 midterms are in Illinois for Republican gubernatorial candidate Andy McKenna. McKenna, a former state party chair, has featured the famous hair of disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) in each of his early ads — a symbol of the corruption and business as usual that has dominated politics in the state. McKenna’s new ad starts with an image of Blago’s hair atop the state capitol dome while a narrator details what Blagojevich — and, by extension, his successor Pat Quinn — have done to the state. McKenna faces a serious primary challenge from, among others, former state attorney general Jim Ryan but win or lose he has provided a potent blueprint for the GOP nominee to ensure voters don’t forget about Blagojevich next year.