Proponents of a constitutional amendment to give commercial fishing operations a break on their property taxes are using a TV ad done as a class project at Bowdoin College to get their message across.
Political consultant Dennis Bailey said the group really didn’t have enough money to make a slick TV commercial, so he turned instead to the work of four students in Professor Chris Potholm’s government and politics class.
Potholm had assigned his class the job of creating ads on the referendum questions on next week’s ballot. He called Bailey and said the ad his students had created on the working waterfront was really good.
“He said it was a great ad. I was dubious,” Bailey said, until he saw it and also realized he didn’t have enough cash to pay for a professional production.
“It’s a little low-rent, but the concepts were all there,” Bailey said. The ad is running on Time Warner and Adelphia cable networks and can be seen on the CNN and Arts and Entertainment channels.
It features Sen. Dennis Damon, D-Hancock, and lobsterman Roger Berle of Cliff Island.
“It’s the kind of ad I like because it will grab you,” Bailey said. It is in color when it talks about Maine’s waterfront and switches to black and white when the waterfront is turned into strip malls.
The working waterfront constitutional amendment is Question 7 on the ballot. It asks voters to allow waterfront land used for commercial fishing to be assessed at its current use, rather than its potential value if developed.
The ad was created by Bowdoin students Jay Tansey, Kiel McQueen, Alex Pellerin and Ethan Galloway, and Bailey said he paid the students $500 for their work.
-Victoria Wallack, Maine Statehouse News
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