In any election year, Labor Day is, supposedly, the start of the official campaign season. The campaigns started last Monday, huh? Well, you sure could have fooled me.

It’s not like the campaigns haven’t saturated the TV markets since the minute the primary was over in June. Heck, it was going on before that – Tom Vilsack began running an ad attacking Doug Gross a few days before the primary took place. It’s not like candidates for all elected positions weren’t out pressing the flesh and passing out stickers beforehand. Both gubernatorial candidates, both candidates for House District 3 and Greg Ganske showed up at Gladbrook’s Corn Carnival parade in July.

In short, the idea of calling Labor Day the “start” of any campaign is stupid – unless you live somewhere that didn’t have a primary until August, like Michigan, or has yet to have one, like Florida. If you think the ads here have been bad, those states had more than two candidates purchasing airtime throughout this summer. They might have even given prescription drug companies a run for their money in who had more commercials per hour.

That, of course, is the crux of any election season. It’s the esteemed, respected part of all political campaigns – running the same ad over and over until it gets old, and then running a new ad over and over.

Now, Gross has tried to have a little fun with the ads, even though they are negative. For instance, there was the “Doug Gross is From Mars” ad, which Vilsack’s campaign soon countered by dragging up Des Moines Register articles from 1989 about possible shady state bookkeeping practices and saying Gross was more likely from “planet Enron.”

Gross’ ads have been sounding a little like a broken record — one that might not have been whole to begin with. All the ads concentrate on a billion-dollar surplus (which may or may not have existed) which under Vilsack became a billion-dollar deficit (which may or may not exist) and avoid mentioning any plans Gross has for fixing this problem (which also may or may not exist – the plans, that is). The interesting part is that Gross hasn’t been balancing the negative ads with “touchy-feely” ads; almost none have shown up since the primary.

Of course, Vilsack hasn’t exactly been playing nice either. Besides the standard rebuttals to Gross’ ads (example above), the campaign shrewdly turned a fellow Republican’s words against Gross.

During one of the primary debates, candidate Bob Vander Plaats, in making his case for the nomination, said Vilsack would make Gross out as a poster child for special interests. The Democrats took the sound bite and ran; with a well-placed ellipsis, they said the same thing, only omitting the part where Vander Plaats said “Vilsack would.” Chalk one up for the power of the ellipsis in advertising.

Getting these ads on all the stations in one area is bad enough, but during the summer I got them from two different markets: both central and eastern Iowa. Since Gross wasn’t well-known in eastern Iowa – and picking a Sioux City woman as his running mate didn’t help – it was only natural that the Vilsack campaign dump the negative ads in this area. The worst part was that they didn’t supplant the stream of daytime Hamilton College ads – at least that school seems to have plenty of money on hand.

If Labor Day is the start of anything, it is when the House campaigns get into full swing with their ads. Radio ads sponsored by the Sierra Club taking aim at Tom Latham’s record and TV ads for Leonard Boswell have made it out there, some of the first salvoes in a steady stream. And now, after almost fading into the background, ads for the Harkin-Ganske race will multiply, and keep doing so until November.

But now that we are into the “official campaign season,” we may finally stop seeing the attack ads euphemistically known as “defining your opponent” and seeing those euphemistically known as “addressing the issues”. Or not. After all, when was the last time anyone did that?

Jeff Morrison is a junior in journalism and mass communication and political science from Traer. He is a copy editor for the Daily.