Clanging prison bars, flashing police lights and shackled criminals are showing up more and more on TV this fall, as campaign ads focus on the 1994 election's most powerful theme.
Democrats and Republicans, incumbents and challengers in races at every level are keying in on what polls say is the voters' top concern.
"The top three issues in gubernatorial campaigns this year are crime, crime and crime," says Page Boinset of the National Governors' Association.
Although Republicans traditionally have been viewed as toughest on crime, congressional passage of a $33 billion crime bill this year gave Democrats a law-and-order platform to run on.
But the GOP isn't giving any ground, and both sides are hammering away on the issue:
-- In Massachusetts, Sen. Edward Kennedy, a liberal who opposes the death penalty, is running the first crime ad of his 34-year career. Kennedy's ad cites laws he passed 10 years ago ending parole for federal prisoners and denying bail to dangerous defendants.
Republican opponent Mitt Romney's response: "He's got to be kidding." In a counterattack ad, Romney charges Kennedy with trying to dilute this year's crime bill.
-- In Georgia, incumbent Democratic Gov. Zell Miller proposed a "two strikes and you're out" law: life sentences for two violent felonies. His GOP challenger, Guy Milner, whose ad campaign featured the story of a violent attack on his daughter, goes further. He calls for ending parole, removing weight training and cable TV from prisons, and more hard labor.
-- In Tennessee, Democratic Sen. James Sasser calls for "zero tolerance for violence in schools," in an ad that pictures him in a police cruiser. Challenger Bill Frist's ads attack Sasser's votes: "Not only did Sasser vote to support quotas on the death penalty, his votes have allowed death row inmates to drag their cases on for years."
-- In Texas, Gov. Ann Richards has vastly increased prisons: 92,000 prisoners are now behind bars, compared with 50,000 in 1990. But her Republican opponent, George W. Bush, says more should be behind bars. He calls for putting them in tents.
Meanwhile, in the Texas Senate race, Democrat Richard Fisher's ad pounds incumbent Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison for voting against a ban on assault weapons.
"Crime is a tough issue for Democrats," concedes Texas Democratic media consultant Mark McKinnon. "No matter how far to the right we get, Republicans get righter. We say, `Hang 'em.' They say, `Gas 'em.' "
While Democrats brag in their ads about putting more cops on the street and banning assault weapons, Republicans generally focus on their belief in the death penalty, tough juvenile justice, and abolishing parole.
In New York, for example, Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo pushed hard for the crime bill, but has been hit hard among some voters for his longstanding opposition to the death penalty.
"You have a very cynical, frustrated, angry electorate," says GOP media consultant Don Sipple. "They are not interested in cliches. They are not interested in cerebral discussions. They are relating to gut issues, issues they view in terms of right vs. wrong."
Many candidates drive home that point by showing their own traumas, or those of their constituents.
Democrat Ronaldo Rios, challenging Rep. Henry Bonilla, R-Texas, plans an ad telling voters his own father was gunned down in cold blood.
In California, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein claims firsthand experience with violence in an ad that shows her in 1978 as a chairman of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors announcing the murders of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.
Feinstein portrays herself as a "strong, sometimes lonely voice for the death penalty in the Democratic Party."
But her GOP opponent, Michael Huffington, counters that she votes for "soft-on-crime judges," including one who "freed a cop-killer."
Crime plays a key role in the California governor's race as well.
In the four years Pete Wilson has been governor, California has executed only two convicted murderers.
But Wilson has seized on the death penalty issue in his race against Democratic challenger Kathleen Brown.
One Wilson ad ironically claims that Brown favors the death penalty "just like her brother," former governor Jerry Brown. It notes Jerry Brown appointed former state Supreme Court chief justice Rose Bird, a death penalty opponent, and concludes, "We can't take that risk again." Three faces are lined up on the screen: Brown, Brown and Bird.
Wilson's ad omits a key fact: Kathleen Brown says she'll enforce the death penalty because it's state law, even if she opposes capital punishment out of personal conviction and her religious views as a Roman Catholic.
That's the same position adopted by her father and brother when they were governor. Her father, Pat Brown, while governor from 1959 to 1967, allowed 36 people to go to the gas chamber.
A Brown ad shows her with police officers, pledging to enforce the death penalty, appoint tough judges and put more cops on the streets. Wilson's parole policies are attacked as too lenient.
Wilson's stand on crime, along with immigration, is credited with pushing him ahead in recent polls. When the Los Angeles Times polled voters on which candidate could best handle crime problems, 50% said Wilson. Only 24% favored Brown.
Many California Democrats, like Tish Green, say they are having a tough time with the issue. Although she's "no big admirer" of Wilson, Green says, she remains undecided about whom she'll vote for: "These days, we need all the help we can get against the criminals."
