Emotional storytelling will be key for newcomers and veteran politicians alike.
Political advertising underwent a dramatic evolution in the lead-up to the 2018 midterm elections, with emotionally potent narratives helping launch several newcomers onto the national stage.
While not all these candidates were as successful as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose campaign video “The Courage to Change” helped propel her to an unexpected primary victory and then a prominent role in U. S. politics, powerful ads for candidates like Texas Democrat MJ Hegar and Wisconsin gubernatorial hopeful Kelda Roys laid a foundation for personal storytelling to be a key part of campaigns moving forward.
Today we saw a new entrant into this era of highly personal and emotionally resonant political ads with astronaut Mark Kelly’s announcement that he will run for the U. S. Senate seat formerly held by Arizona’s John McCain.
While Kelly’s announcement video follows a few traditional paths of political advertising—describing being raised by his strong-willed police officer mom and how he learned “the value of hard work,” for example—it also shows how he’s part of a new breed: Americans entering politics not as a career but as a call to service. That focus on the “why” someone got into government from a nontraditional path rather than the “how” of working their way up the ladder is likely to be a recurring theme we’ll see more and more between now and the primaries of 2020.
Here’s Kelly’s launch video, “My New Mission:”
Key to Kelly’s story is his wife, former U.
