The Creators Of "Demon Sheep" Bring Giant Mutant Foxes To The Los Angeles Mayoral Race

So the same Republican Super-PAC that brought you Demon Sheep in 2010 for the California Senate race now brings you......errrr.......Giant Mutant Foxes for the 2013 LA Mayor's race.




Funded by Better Way LA, a GOP super-pack committee which has raised nearly $500,000 on behalf of lone Republican candidate Kevin James,  and created by GOP campaign strategist Fred Davis, the ad uses a disturbingly taxidermy-like stuffed fox from Davis' taxidermy collection and unflattering imagery to attack the three Democratic candidates for Los Angeles Mayor - Eric Garcetti, Wendy Greuel and Jan Perry - with a litany of never-changing GOP talking points (fat-cat bureaucrats, beholden to public-sector unions, out of control government, yadayadayadayada........)

The deliberately amateurish video is clearly angling for the same kind of earned media buzz Davis generated in 2010 for the equally weird "Demon Sheep" video on behalf of Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina against Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer.

Several Republican strategists who have worked with Davis on past campaigns criticized the ad man for sometimes valuing the attention an ad gets over how it might help a candidate's campaign. "He goes for anything that will go viral, whether it's extreme or not, whether it helps the campaign or not," one strategist, who declined to be named talking about Davis, told Yahoo News. "He just wants eyeballs and has to have adult supervision around the clock."

What's less clear is how Davis' latest effort will help James, who's running far behind his three Democratic opponents both in fundraising and name recognition.

Most campaign strategists I've talked with believe James' best shot at being LA's next mayor rests in his ability to knock Wendy Greuel out of the primary by appealing to many of the same conservative valley voters Greuel hopes to woo between now and March 5th.

And, indeed, James has repeatedly gone after Greuel in every debate and candidate forum they've jointly attended, making increasingly outlandish and largely unsubstantiated claims against her - the latest an attempt to tie Greuel tangentially to disgraced LA County Assessor John Noguez, who remains behind bars on corruption charges.

Asking in a press release whether Noguez might have been “a pseudo-advisor to Controller Greuel on how to manage city funds”,  James offered as "proof" a single entry on Greuel's office calendar showing a meeting between Greuel and Noguez when Noguez was still just a candidate for County Assessor.

Better Way LA has pledged to raise at least $3.5 million on behalf of James. Forgive the metaphor, but that kind of dough can buy a lot of cheese in the race for Los Angeles Mayor. If the latest efforts from Fred Davis and Kevin James are any indication, both have an endless supply to give.