Listen to “The Truth Behind the Takubo Attack” on Spreaker.
This week brought the first real glimpse of dirty politics as we move toward the May primary.
An ad from the Mountaineer Conservative Coalition — a leadership PAC tied to West Virginia Senate President Randy Smith — tries to paint Kanawha County Senator Tom Takubo as someone who supports biological males competing in girls’ sports. That is simply not true.
As we have discussed on Talkline, Takubo voted no on legislation in 2021 banning boys from competing in girls’ sports not because he supported that practice, but because the bill went beyond high school athletics and attempted to regulate collegiate sports as well. Takubo’s argument was that college athletics fall under the NCAA and are more appropriately addressed at the federal level.
His concern was straightforward: why risk inviting additional legal scrutiny of West Virginia’s law by extending it into collegiate athletics, potentially jeopardizing enforcement at the high school level while the issue played out in court?
That prudent nuance, however, has now opened the door to political attacks stripped of context and built around an emotionally charged issue about which many voters hold strong convictions.
This kind of maneuver seems out of character for Smith. Yet, the evidence clearly establishes his connection to the PAC, and it is logical to conclude he has at least some degree of influence over the political messaging it puts into the field. Otherwise, common political acumen says he would have already distanced himself from the ad. He hasn’t.
Instead, sources say Smith, his son and other senators in his faction reportedly this week met with various contacts in an effort to solicit more monies, presumably for similar aims.
But do negative ads like this really work? Many assume they must, since campaigns keep using them cycle after cycle.
The reality is more complicated. Attack ads can damage a candidate’s image, but they rarely move large numbers of votes, and in some cases they backfire. Where they still matter most is on the margins — shaping perceptions, reinforcing existing narratives, and influencing a narrow band of undecided voters.
And in West Virginia’s upcoming primary races, that narrow band matters a great deal, especially this time around.
Independent voters — particularly those who may prefer more traditional conservative candidates — are now shut out of the process. The people who pushed for that change knew exactly what they were doing. In a one-party-dominated state, shrinking the pool of eligible voters means shrinking the number of votes you need to win.
Why try to win the hearts and minds of independent conservatives when you don’t have to? It’s a lot easier to not have to deal with them at all.
If the real prize is a relatively small group of undecided registered republicans eligible to vote in the primary — many of whom care deeply about the issue of boys competing in girls’ sports — then it makes political sense to test whether an ad like this can move enough of them. The strategy is obvious: use ominous black and white imagery and slow motion video coupled with mysterious music to paint the villain, a known influencer who speaks a narrative in the first half of the ad that anyone agrees with, then strip away the context, toss in an accusation of putting young girls at risk and hope enough voters react to the theater rather than the facts.
Sadly, we are going to see many more ads like this, because that is the nature of modern politics. It’s an almost anything-goes system now. That may be for the best. Who among us is qualified to determine what should enter public discourse?
Still, voters are not powerless. They can decide what they are willing to believe. They can look deeper. They can ask direct questions. They can demand answers from candidates themselves. And they can ask why an ad is being run by some vaguely named PAC instead of by an actual candidate or current officer holder willing to stand behind it.
Attack ads only work if the electorate let them.
I still believe West Virginians are too smart to buy them.