ICYMI: Thoughts on Randy Feenstra’s weird, weak campaign rollout
DES MOINES – Republican Representative Randy Feenstra announced his run for governor on October 28th. This move wasn’t particularly surprising. He’d organized an ‘exploratory committee’ to look into a run, but his official start was a lot more strange than most would have expected.
As journalist Laura Belin lays out, here’s what was weird about Feenstra’s launch week:
- The three-term member of Congress announced his new candidacy four weeks into a federal government shutdown, as a quarter of a million Iowans were on the verge of losing food assistance.
- Feenstra’s launch video was bizarre on several levels.
- The candidate doesn’t say a word to the camera.
- The narrator repeatedly reminds us that Feenstra is tall. I counted seven such references (“new heights,” “standing tall,” “no tall tale”) in the latest video.
- Many social media commenters remarked that this narrator, who says Feenstra was “born and raised here in rural Iowa,” doesn’t sound like an Iowan or even a Midwesterner. No one could quite place the accent. Texas? Oklahoma?
- The Feenstra ad pivots to spend more than 30 seconds attacking the Democratic front-runner.
- I’ve rarely seen a launch video go negative, unless it’s for a candidate running against an incumbent.
- Almost every hit is false or misleading.
- Simon Conway wanted to know whether Feenstra is up for debating the other Republicans running for governor. “I’ll tell you what, Simon. We’ll be working it out over the next several months and see how that all plays out. My whole focus right now—”
- Conway interrupted to object to what he called a “horribly political answer.” He tried again for a yes or no. Feenstra deflected.
- Good candidates know how to stay on message. But Feenstra takes canned talking points to an absurd level.
Read the whole story by clicking here.
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