Bev Perdue: "I have decided to take my negative TV ads off the air.  It’s the right decision for me and for North Carolina."

Better late than never.

I wonder what led to this decision. She says that people kept asking her to stop, so a cynical view would be that she's stopping because the negativity was hurting her with voters. Or maybe Moore's negative ads are hurting her, and this is a way of disarming him and claiming the high ground.

Or maybe she really did find it all distasteful and is happy to be done with it.

No comment in the statement on her current opinion of her earlier ads.

Comments

[JAT]

Is that the one with or without the bad haircuts?

[James]

I think campaigns listen to consultants, who in my experience are mostly men loaded with testosterone and who love a good fight. When Perdue and Moore came to BlueNC, there were a significant number of questions about the negative campaigns, questions that were hard to answer (and mostly went unanswered).

I take this as the voices of regular people finally getting heard, and I'm glad to see it. Not only does it seem smart politically, it also happens to be the high-road thing to do.

I know that the idea of a candidate listening and responding seems absurdly naive these days, but perhaps that's simply what's happening here. That's my take anyway.

[John Burns]

I'm reminded of Bill Cosby's riff about drinking too much...

"Oh toilet bowl. Beautiful cool toilet bowl. I'll NEVER drink again, toilet bowl..."