Professor McDaniel Comments on Negative Election Mail

SAN FRANCISCO MAGAZINE -- In the meantime, your domicile is now barricaded by heaps of mailers sent out by individual candidates as well as negative fliers underwritten by the aforementioned tech elites urging San Franciscans not to vote for “The Aaron Peskin Machine” (or Guy Fawkes). It remains to be seen how effective these (costly) negative ads will be; SF State political science professor Jason McDaniel figures negative ads might fire up those already sophisticated enough to understand the implications of what “The Peskin Machine” is supposed to mean. But it’s asking a lot of voters to go through a roll-call of several score candidates and not vote for people. More effective is a list of whom to vote for, such as the one released by Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom (though the Marin resident raised many eyebrows when he urged San Franciscans to “join Gavin Newsom in voting for” his preferred candidates).