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Airing It Out
November 4
How a last-minute ad blitz helped put one underdog over the top
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Business New Haven
11/17/1997
By: Michael C. Bingham
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I don't live in Hamden, probably never will, and the matter of whoever the hell sits in the mayor's office there, as a friend of mine used to say, don't make no never-mind to me. But if anyone doubted the power of a simple advertising message, repeated over and over and over, the surprising upset of Hamden Mayor Lillian D. Clayman November 4 by Republican challenger Barbara DeNicola ought to be an object lesson well learned.
By most accounts, three-term incumbent Clayman is a competent chief executive who understands the nuts and bolts of municipal management. Not even most GOP observers gave her opponent, sister of former Hamden mayor (1985-87) John DeNicola Jr. and daughter of former Hamden mayor (1957-67) John DeNicola Sr., much of a shot. After all, the same card had produced a comfy 2,000-vote victory margin for Clayman just two years ago.
But then a funny thing happened: advertising. In the week leading up to Election Day, DeNicola saturated the airways with spots that blistered the putative misdeeds of Clayman's administration, but never sank to the personal level. The spots were cleverly constructed, consistent in format (and thus instantly recognizable) - and, in the hours leading up to November 4, impossible to escape.
“It was an absolute media blitz running about eight days up to the election,” says WELI (960 AM) Program Director Mike Raub, whose station was the beneficiary of thousands of DeNicola campaign ad dollars. Clayman, who has been scorched by 'ELI gabmeisters from both left and right in the past, chose not to buy air time on the unfriendly station.
Her administrative virtues notwithstanding, Clayman can be thin-skinned and brittle in the face of criticism, and has shown herself inclined to avoid or shun those who say things she doesn't wish to hear. Still others perceive her as shrill, a tad haughty and ambitious to an unseemly degree. The latter perception was played deftly by DeNicola.
[Ringing phone.]
“Barbara DeNicola for Mayor.”
“Is it true that Lillian Clayman won't even promise to serve out her term if she's re-elected mayor?”
“That's true. It's been said that she has her eye on the Secretary of State job in next year's election.”
“Vote for Barbara DeNicola for mayor November 4: a candidate who will put Hamden first - not her own career.”
Hamden's economy has been hampered in the 1990s by the same inescapable recessionary woes as the rest of the region, with retail in places such as Spring Glen and Dixwell Avenue having a tough go of it in recent years.
That's hard to pin on Clayman personally. But DeNicola was able to massage a perception that the incumbent is a bit of a know-it-all, and not at all quick to listen to unrefined business-owner types about what's best for the town and its tax base.
[Ringing phone.]
“Barbara DeNicola for Mayor.”
“Can I speak to Hamden's economic development coordinator?”
“I wish you could. But Lillian Clayman eliminated the economic development coordinator's job. And she doesn't even speak to the chamber of commerce.”
“That can't be good for Hamden taxpayers.”
In government as in business, intellectual flexibility assumes an ever-greater value as the pace and scope of change accelerates throughout American society. But Clayman chose to dig in her heels in a malodorous legal matter, and left herself wide open to critics in Hamden and beyond as it became plainer that she was holding a losing hand:
[Ringing phone.]
“Barbara DeNicola for Mayor.”
“Is it true that Hamden has been ordered to pay $8 million in sewage fees, and Lillian Clayman hasn't set aside a nickel to pay it?”
“That's true. We're paying town lawyers $350 an hour to appeal, while interest on the $8 million is costing over $2,100 a day. Sooner or later, Hamden taxpayers will pay.”
If I had a nickel for every time I've heard Clayman preach that “Hamden is a city, not a suburb,” I could...well, I could probably pay Hamden's sewage bill. But the most clever aspect of this spot is that DeNicola declined to remind voters that Hamden owes that money to the city of New Haven in a long-running dispute over user fees for waste-disposal.
And even as Hamden becomes subsumed by its distrusted larger sibling to the south and watches with alacrity as big-city ills such as crime and poverty flow outward from their source, DeNicola knows that most Hamden voters fear the urban jungle that Clayman herself openly disdains. Reminding her audience where Hamden's $8 million would go would surely have backfired.
Because she didn't, come January she'll be moving her effects into a new office at the corner of Whitney and Dixwell - and thus set out on the bumpy byway toward Campaign '99, whence voters will doubtless be reminded once again that, in electoral politics as in life, perception is reality.
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