Campaign ads turning voters off or vice versa?

Take heart, TV viewers, just a couple of more days to the runoff election and it will all come to a merciful end. No more grainy pictures of Jim “Soft on Crime” Martin. No more slow-motion footage of Saxby Chambliss “saying ‘No’ to the middle class.”

Come Wednesday, Judge Judy will once again be interrupted by pitches for Viagra and ambulance-chasing lawyers, not the political venom that has ruled the airwaves for the past month.

The runoff election for the U.S. Senate between Republican incumbent Chambliss and Democratic challenger Martin has become a proxy war for the two national parties and special interest groups who have money left over from the general election to spend.

Republican operative Tom Perdue, a consultant for Chambliss, has seen many nasty and expensive campaigns since his start in Georgia politics in 1974.

“But I’ve never seen one like this, with the intensity and the amount of money,” said Perdue, a remarkable statement coming from a man once known around the state Capitol as the Prince of Darkness.

Perdue figures the two campaigns and the independent groups will spend a total of $15 million on the runoff race. As Tuesday approaches, the tone of the ads has remained dark — although Chambliss took a 36-hour Thanksgiving respite from the negativity with a family-by-the-fireplace piece.

“People say they don’t like negative ads, but those ads work,” Perdue said, although he fears hitting a saturation level. “I think at this point so many people are tuning them out.”

DeKalb County resident Valerie Lyons, a retired librarian, laughed when asked about the omnipresent ads.

“Puh-lease, I can’t wait for Dec. 2nd,” she said. “I watch reruns of ‘Law & Order’ on TNT and [the ads] are ubiquitous on that.”

“By the time the election comes, people will be for neither of them,” said Lyons, who voted for John McCain but supports Martin.

Chad McLaughlin, a health care manager from Kennesaw who supports Chambliss, has pretty much tuned out the ads but is amazed how the two sides stack their ads right after another, offering diametrically opposed views of reality.

“Thank God for Tivo,” said Bill Thorneloe, a psychiatrist from Smyrna who supports Martin.

He said he usually uses the digital recorder to fast-forward through the ads. But, occasionally, he finds himself stopping to watch for amusement.

“It’s developed into a sideshow; this is like a passion play put on for our entertainment,” said Matt Towery, a former Republican legislator who runs the polling service Insider Advantage. “TV creates awareness. But they’ve gone beyond awareness to ludicrous. I think they’ve turned people off.”

He said most ads are aiming at building up or tearing down the candidates, not at getting voters to turn out for the runoff election, which Towery said is now more important.

The Georgia campaign is the last major race nationwide still being decided by voters, causing outside groups to rush into the state and spend money on behalf of the candidates. Outside groups such as the Americans for Job Security, the League of Conservation Voters Action Fund and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee are pitching for Martin. The National Republican Trust PAC, Freedom’s Watch and the National Republican Senatorial Committee are spending freely for Chambliss.

By law, such groups cannot coordinate their strategies with the campaigns, causing many of the ads to seem duplicative, said Doug Heyl, a Democratic media consultant. And since the independent groups must stay at arm’s length, the visual quality of the ads suffers since many of the images are copied from the Internet. But grainy black-and-white photos work because they make the target of the ads look sinister, he said.

“They’re using grain lines in the pictures; we call them ‘bad man lines,’ ” Heyl said. “It’s so bad it’s good.”