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Since then, he has focused and juiced up McCain’s ads, in one case depicting Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, as a celebrity in the tradition of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.
And for the last few days, he’s been backstage at the Republican National Convention, altering and compressing the script to reflect concern about Hurricane Gustav.
As it turned out, Gustav did not strike New Orleans with the anticipated force, but Davis was still left with the job of managing what had become a shorter convention.
He also has been working on a video introducing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, McCain’s surprise pick as his vice-presidential running mate. The video, to be shown today, will be narrated by the actor Jon Voight.
Davis was familiar with Palin, having produced ads for her successful 2006 gubernatorial campaign.
But this time around, he has had to deal with the attention generated by the announcement that Palin’s oldest daughter, Bristol, is pregnant and unmarried.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Davis is a somewhat unconventional figure at the convention, where the suits generally wear suits.
“Mr. Davis – with his feathered and graying long hair, jeans and black linen shirt and nickname ‘Hollywood’ – could be mistaken for a band member of his friend Joe Cocker.”
A native of Oklahoma, Davis, 56, dropped out of college and took over his father’s three-man advertising agency when the elder Davis died.
He grew the company that became Davis & Matos, Inc., eventually moving it to California and renaming it Strategic Perception Inc.
The company has had a wide variety of corporate clients including The Famous Amos Chocolate Chip Cookie Company and the Associated Funeral Directors Service Corporation.
In 1994, Davis took on his first political campaign, helping his uncle, Republican James Inhofe, win election to the U.S. Senate from Oklahoma.
Davis and his company have since worked on many Republican campaigns, including the 2004 re-election of George W. Bush and the 2006 re-election of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
His campaign ads are sometimes marked by humor and/or pointed satire.
In 2002, he helped Sonny Perdue become governor of Georgia by creating an ad that suggested Perdue’s opponent, the incumbent governor, was a giant rat roaming the state.
Davis is also adept at suggesting an opponent’s strength is a liability, as in the Obama “celebrity” ad that tries to undercut the enormous attention drawn by Obama in Europe.
Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska since 2006, is John McCain’s choice for his vice-presidential running mate.
The selection is considered a potentially high-risk, but also high-reward gamble to woo conservatives, as well as female voters who may still feel alienated by Barack Obama’s defeat of Hillary Clinton.
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While relatively inexperienced as a politician, Palin, 44, is a bona-fide conservative with a compelling life story. A mother of five, she has one son who will deploy to Iraq next month as an Army infantryman, and a four-month-old infant with Down syndrome.
She is also a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association and an opponent of abortion, whose pick is expected to reassure the evangelical base of the Republican party.
In a rousing introduction, Palin portrayed herself as a reform-minded governor of Alaska who has challenged the party’s old guard, attacked pork-barrel spending and taken a strong interest in energy issues.
“I stood up to the special interests, the lobbyists, the oil companies and the good old boy network,” she said, noting she had turned down federal funding for the “bridge to nowhere,” a project championed by two Republican congressmen from Alaska that became a symbol of wasteful spending.
Sarah Palin
Expectations had been that McCain would choose a more experienced politician. High on the list of potential VP candidates were Minnesota Gov. Tom Pawlenty, failed presidential candidate Mitt Romney, former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge and Sen. Joe Lieberman.
But picking a woman from outside the beltway could pay dividends with voters looking for confirmation that McCain is a maverick determined to change politics as usual. It also gives the McCain campaign the ability to claim that it, too, is potentially historic.
Palin went out of her way to invoke the precedents set by Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman on a Democratic presidential ticket, as well by Clinton, saying she had left “18 million cracks” in the highest glass ceiling in the land.
Then, making a direct appeal to Clinton’s supporters, she said, “It turns out that the women in America aren’t finished yet, and we can shatter that glass ceiling.”
The down side of the selection, however, is that by putting a first-term governor on the ticket, GOP attacks on Obama’s youth and inexperience may now ring hollow.
In addition, McCain and Palin have disagreed on energy policy, an issue that will play a major role in the general election. As governor of Alaska, Palin supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Earlier this week, The Weekly Standard described her as “the nation’s most prominent advocate” of drilling in the wildlife refuge that environmentalists see as one of America’s most precious natural wilderness areas.
McCain, who recently reversed his position on offshore drilling, had long opposed oil exploration in the wildlife refuge.
In her first remarks on a national stage, however, Palin stressed their shared belief in the need to challenge the status quo. “This is a moment when principle and political independence matter a lot more than the party line,” she said.
The daughter of a science teacher and school secretary, Palin is a former Miss Alaska runnerup, who holds a degree in journalism from the University of Idaho. She describes herself as “a hockey mom,” who initially got involved in politics through the PTA.
Palin served two terms on the city council of Wasilla, a suburb of Anchorage, AK, from 1992 to 1996, was elected mayor in 1996, and ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor in 2002.
After charging then-Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski with misconduct, she won election in 2006, by defeating the incumbent governor in the Republican primary, and then a former Democratic governor in the general election.
Details of Palin’s personal life have contributed to her own image as a political maverick. She hunts, eats moose hamburger, ice fishes, rides snowmobiles, and owns a float plane.
Her husband, Todd, is a commercial fisherman and, she noted in her introduction, “a proud member of the United Steelworkers union.” Outside the fishing season, he works for BP at an oil field on the North Slope and is a champion snowmobiler, winning the 2,000-mile Iron Dog race four times.
The couple have three daughters: Bristol, 17, Willow, 13, and Piper, 7. Three days after giving birth to her second son, Trig Paxson Van Palin, on April 18th, she returned to the office.
As governor, Palin is facing a state investigation related to her firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan who alleged that his removal was due in part to his reluctance to fire an Alaska state trooper, Mike Wooten, who had been involved in a divorce and child custody battle with Palin’s sister, Molly McCann.
Palin disputes that charge, asserting Monegan was dismissed for not filling state trooper vacancies, and because he “did not turn out to be a team player on budgeting issues.”
In a prepared statement yesterday, the Obama campaign portrayed Palin as an ideologue without the experience to govern.
“Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency,” said campaign spokesman Bill Burton. “Governor Palin shares John McCain’s commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush’s failed economic policies – that’s not the change we need, it’s just more of the same.”
To hear McCain’s introduction of Palin, click here:
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The ad, titled “Celeb,” calls Obama “the biggest celebrity in the world,” and juxtaposes images of the Democratic presidential candidate with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.
Kathy Hilton posted her response to the ad on Huffington Post yesterday morning, calling the video a waste of McCain supporters’ money, not to mention voters’ time and attention.
Hilton concluded that the ad “is a completely frivolous way to choose the next president of the United States.”
Hilton and her hotel-magnate husband have given $4,600 to McCain’s campaign in the past year.
Paris Hilton released a statement through her representative last week stating that her permission was not given or requested for the McCain campaign’s use of her image.
New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert wrote Saturday that McCain was “calling out Barack Obama on race,” connecting him to highly-sexed white women who are “notorious for displaying themselves to the paparazzi while not wearing underwear.”
Race, Herbert wrote, is the only reason “the opposition feels compelled to run low-life political ads featuring tacky, sexually provocative white women who have no connection whatsoever to the black male candidates.”
Steve Schmidt, a senior advisor to McCain countered, “It’s beyond dispute that (Obama) has become the biggest celebrity in the world.”
McCain’s camp is also running another anti-Obama ad that aligns Obama with a personality who might be considered the polar opposite of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears: Moses. The second ad, titled “The One,” mocks Obama by comparing him to Moses separating the waters of the Red Sea.
Watch the McCain-sponsored ads “Celeb” and “The One” below:
UPDATE:
Paris Hilton has responded to John McCain’s campaign ad with a spoof video, posted on the website Funny or Die.
The same Phil Gramm who this week said the economy is not as bad as people think and that we’ve “become a nation of whiners” once tried to peddle so-called “death bonds” to the state of Texas and its teacher pension fund.
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“Ghoulish,” some pension administrators called the idea, according to The Dallas Morning News.
Gramm, vice chairman of Swiss banking giant UBS and a former Texas senator, is a key adviser to presidential candidate John McCain. His remarks about the economy were a big topic of campaign coverage Thursday.
In December 2003, soon after he joined UBS, Gramm met quietly with Texas officials, The News reported. He wanted the state to sell bonds and use the proceeds to buy annuities and life insurance policies on thousands of retired teachers, with their knowledge. The plan supposedly would have reaped millions of dollars for the Teacher Retirement System of Texas.
The state rejected the idea.
This week, Gramm told the Washington Times that the current economic malaise is “a mental recession,” not a real recession, yet.
“Misery sells newspapers,” Gramm said. “Thank God the economy is not as bad as you read in the newspaper every day.”
He should be sure to tell that to his employer. UBS has written off nearly $40 billion in bad real-estate-related loans and is being investigated by federal authorities.
Gramm has been registered as a lobbyist for UBS, but he said that is no longer the case.
Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon has a former Oklahoma governor (Frank Keating) and U.S. senator (Don Nickles) on his Oklahoma City-based company’s board of directors. That seems only fitting. McClendon’s great uncle, Robert S. Kerr, co-founded Kerr-McGee and served as Oklahoma governor and senator.
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These are boom times for Chesapeake, founded by McClendon – whose middle name is Kerr – and Tom Ward in 1989 with an initial investment of $50,000. The company went public in 1993. After some rough going, its stock price has increased fiftyfold since.
Chesapeake is currently the nation’s third largest producer of natural gas, but McClendon predicts it will be No. 1 by the end of the year. He told shareholders at the company’s annual meeting last month that the Haynesville Shale field in Louisiana and Northeast Texas could be the company’s most significant field ever.
“We are really off to the races in that play,” he said.
Last week, the company announced a $3.3 billion joint venture with Plains Exploration & Production Co. that values Chesapeake’s holdings in the Haynesville region at $30,000 an acre, more than six times what it paid.
The company is also the biggest player in the Barnett Shale region around Fort Worth, where it has employed actor Tommy Lee Jones to tout the benefits of natural gas in radio, TV, newspaper and billboard advertising.
“The Barnett Shale is a national treasure that will benefit all Texans for generations,” the actor says in a TV spot.
Star-Telegram columnist Mitch Schnurman points out that McClendon has a “history of funding aggressive public-opinion campaigns.” He supported the Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry, defended the Duke (his alma mater) lacrosse team against rape accusations and fought the construction of coal power plants in Texas.
Coal is a cheaper fuel to use to generate electricity but natural gas is cleaner.
Chesapeake’s main business strategy is to “grow through the drillbit,” meaning exactly what it says. The company claims to have the most active drilling program in the United States.
Like Fort Worth-based XTO Energy, Cheasapeake also actively hedges its future production to provide some price certainty.
As of May 1, according to Chesapeake’s Web site, the company had hedged more than 70% of its natural gas and oil production for the rest of this year, as well as 80% of gas production and 92% of oil production for 2009.
McClendon also hedges his political bets. He has made campaign contributions to many presidential candidates this year, including Barack Obama and John McCain.
At the annual meeting, McClendon said his company will continue to try to convince the U.S. Congress that Chesapeake is one of the energy good guys.
“We are trying to produce more clean-burning, American-produced natural gas,” he said.
Monday, Chesapeake said that Oklahoma State University President Burns Hargis would join the company’s board on Sept. 15. Tuesday, the company said it would issue 25 million additional shares of common stock.
Emotions are running so high in this year’s presidential race that real estate agents may want to start promoting buildings not only for their park views and their square footage, but for their residents’ political leanings.
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Muckety examined the most recent round of campaign finance reports, analyzing total donations by Manhattan residents who had given at least $1,000. We then totalled contributions by address to see which buildings gave the most to which candidate.
Not surprisingly, most of the top addresses were clustered in a relatively small area around Central Park.
The top money-getters in the top 20 buildings are shown on the map below – M for McCain, C for Clinton and O for Obama.
Not all the addresses are residential buildings. Some contributors – including Peter Peterson and Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone – used business locations. The two private equity managers, at 345 Park Avenue, are backing McCain.
Leonard and Evelyn Lauder, reporting their contributions from the offices of Estee Lauder, at 767 Fifth Avenue, support Clinton.
Among top residential buildings, the historic Beresford, at 7 West 81st Street, went for Obama. Clinton drew the majority of dollars donated by residents of the San Remo apartments, on Central Park West.
