Republican ad executive Rick Reed’s work in the 2004 presidential election hurt Democratic candidate Senator John Kerry by attacking his record as a Swift Boat commander during the Vietnam War. He carried out typically unjustified personal attacks on public figures — at his home in Alexandria, Virginia, where he died on August 17. he was 69 years old.
Her daughter McKee Reed confirmed the death but did not give a cause.
A 2004 ad that Reed helped produce was and remains highly controversial for a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Mr. Kelly and his allies, including many who served with him, disputed the group’s allegations that he had betrayed the country by lying about his service and later speaking out against the war. rice field.
Journalists discredited some of the ads, which were part of a broader effort to challenge Mr. Kelly’s war record, including his best-selling book. Republican and former POW Senator John McCain called them “disloyal and dishonorable.”
Reed claimed he had raised legitimate questions about Kelly’s fitness to serve as president. And despite reports undermining the accusations, he claimed in an interview last year that the ad “has never been discredited.”
Kathleen Hall Jamison, director of the Annenberg Center for Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said the Swift Boat campaign definitely hurt Kelly’s candidacy.
Citing a rolling cross-sectional survey conducted by the Center during its campaign of the public’s daily reactions to messages from candidates and news media, she said the ads themselves had little direct impact on voter awareness. said that a wide range of media had taken notice of them.
“They tarnished Kerry’s perception as a strong leader, especially among women in suburbia,” Professor Jamison said. Lack of its own combat mission has largely receded as a problem after the advent of the Swift Boat attack.
Richard Gardner Reed was born on May 24, 1953, in Wakefield, Massachusetts, to financial advisors Gardner Chase Reed and Priscilla (Swet) Reed. He grew up in Chatham, Cape Cod.
He graduated from Franklin and Marshall College in 1975 and later received a master’s degree in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
He first got involved in Republican politics by conducting preliminary research in Florida for the failed Ronald Reagan presidential primary in 1976. After that, he worked for Paul He Manafort and a consulting firm headed by Roger Stone and Donald J. Trump.
Over the course of Reed’s career, his clients included Senator Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois, John Warner and George Allen of Virginia, and Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina.
In a statement provided by Reed’s family, Fitzgerald said, “Rick was an extraordinarily talented and gifted ad creator.” , shoved him into the seat of the U.S. Senate.”
Reed worked on John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2000 and briefly reunited with him in the 2008 presidential election despite the Arizona Senator’s outrage over a 2004 Swift Boat ad. He also produced Trump’s primary campaign ad in 2016.
Part of the old-school political adman who enjoyed writing his own screenplays, Mr. Reid considered Republican pollster Arthur Finkelstein, whom he met early in his career, a mentor.
Reed said of Finkelstein, Interview with Roll Call in 2003“And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
In addition to his daughter Mackie, Reed leaves behind his wife Gayla, whom he met while working together on the National Senate Republican Committee. Another daughter, Carly Reed. Son, Gardner. and his sister Melissa Reed.
According to Reed, his work with Swift Boat Group was a matter of chance. It all started with an email from his uncle in May 2004. Adrian Lonsdalewas one of Kelly’s commanding officers in Vietnam and a former Coast Guard captain en route to Washington for a press conference.
“I said, ‘What is this about?'” Reed recalled last year in an interview on the “First Right” podcast.
According to Reed, Captain Lonsdale “speaks” of Mr. Kelly, who he and “many officers from Vietnam who served with him” effectively locked the Democratic nomination to challenge Mr. Bush in that year’s election. “I’m here for the sake of…”
Mr. Read attended a press conference where Captain Lonsdale and others denounced Mr. Kelly. The main reason was an issue that had been boiling since the 1970s. It’s been a boiling issue since the 1970s. An aluminum naval vessel used to patrol Vietnam’s waterways in the Mekong Delta.
Attendance at the press conference was low and moderate coverage was provided. Shocked.
“I said, ‘Boy, this story has to come out,'” he recalled in an interview with “First Light.”
Get out.
A few weeks later, Reid got a call from Chris Lacivita, a Republican political consultant with whom he had previously worked. “I was hired as a general consultant for the Swift Boat Group,” Reed recalled his LaCivita words. “I think we need to make an ad.”
The first fruit of that effort, a 60-second spot called “Any Questions?” featured more than a dozen Swift Boat veterans. Their attacks were slow.
“If you have any questions about what John Kerry did, please spend three minutes with the man who served him,” the ad began. He was accused of being a man who “betrayed the whole crew” and “unreliable”.
Operating as an independent entity with a relatively modest budget of $500,000, the group placed ads in several markets in Ohio, West Virginia and Wisconsin in early August. He was giving a “call of duty” the night of his nomination at the Democratic National Convention.
Partly because it appeared during the campaign’s summer slump, partly because Kelly’s campaign was slow to respond, the ad caught the attention of network and cable news outlets and was played repeatedly for coverage and commentary. Talk radio and conservative websites further increased the impact of the advertising message and provided additional fuel. That means Mr. Kelly shouldn’t be relied on for his points of basic sales, far beyond where he originally aired.
Later, an ad for a $19 million campaign funded largely by wealthy Texans loyal to Mr. Bush featured an attack on Mr. Kelly by a former prisoner of war and his wife. Ads targeted about a dozen battleground states.
Kelly’s supporters challenged him over the content of the ad, but acknowledged its effectiveness.
A Public Opinion Strategies test of 1,000 voters in 12 battlefield states found that 75% recalled the ad, said L. Patrick Devlin, a professor at the University of Rhode Island. Paper published in American Behavioral Scientist in 2005.
Bill Knapp, a senior strategist in Kelly’s campaign, told Professor Devlin in a 2004 interview cited in the paper.
Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.