I still say that Rep. Ricca Slone (D-Peoria Heights) dug her own political grave by being… Ricca Slone. But a Peoria-area subscriber has a different take on what turned out to be a super-close contest.

The house “professionals” always make the same mistake in Peoria.  They did it back in 1994 against [former state Rep. Jay] Ackerman.  Negative does not sell well here - especially on abortion.  This isn’t Chicago and it isn’t southern Illinois. 

But you should have heard the radio ads.  They just made people uncomfortable.  Using the words “rape and incest” and they would play the ad back to back!!  It really put people off.  I heard women calling on the radio complaining that they were upset about having to explain to their kids what those were.  Every time those ads played she lost 10 votes.  I truly believe that had they not run ANY ads the strength of the district would have carried it.  The tone of the ads motivated people against her.  I’ve never seen anything like it. The more money they spent the worse it got.  I understand the district office was inundated with phone calls every time the ad ran. 

Again, I think this loss is mostly Slone’s fault for alienating so many of her constituents, but these points are worth considering.

Negatives don’t work everywhere, especially when they are cartoonish. Many of the attacks on Rep. Bill Grunloh’s Republican opponent were too over the top to be believable, as was the early mail against Rep. Beth Coulson (although, I will say to my dying day that Coulson protested way too much about a couple of silly mailers). The super-harsh negative TV attacks on Republican Supreme Court candidate Lloyd Karmeier obviously didn’t work. A terribly negative and completely false attack on Democratic Rep. Careen Gordon fatally backfired on the House Republicans.

Of course, all of those candidates and their campaigns had numerous other flaws which led to their downfalls yesterday. I’m not trying to blame losses solely on negative ads. They worked very effectively for Grunloh’s opponent David Reis and most of the other winners yesterday. I do think, however that too often a bludgeon is used when a scalpel would more than suffice.