2018 Governor’s Race Playbook - Raimondo’s Attack Ad Includes Fung’s Wife

2018 Governor’s Race Playbook - Raimondo’s Attack Ad Includes Fung’s Wife

It may be a new standard for political ads. Politicians have included their own spouses and their children in positive ads, but it is hard to remember a political attack ad that included the image of a candidate’s spouse — now there is one.

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Governor Gina Raimondo’s newest Facebook attack ad includes an image of GOP candidate for Governor Allan Fung and his wife Barbara. The ad's focus is that Fung is wearing a Trump hat.

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The inclusion of the candidate's spouse in a negative crosses a previously sacred line.

Raimondo, like her predecessor male governors, used her family campaigns ads, during her 2014 run for Governor.

Raimondo's daughter Ceci was the star of a 2014 political ad about her resume and political plans.

Spouses in Politics

In Presidential elections, spouses sometimes are dragged into the campaigns.

One of the most impactful was the Vice Presidential campaign of Geraldine Ferraro, “Friday the 13th of July 1984 was supposed to be a great day for Rep. Geraldine Ferraro and a great day for New York," reported the New York Daily News in a retrospective in 2017.

"Front pages everywhere trumpeted the news that Walter Mondale had named the Queens congresswoman to be his vice presidential running mate for the November elections the first woman at the top of a national ticket, and a hometown Italian-American at that,” reported the New York Daily News:

This [her life story of success] overlooked the matter of her husband's money. John Zaccaro had real estate firms that did business mostly in Little Italy, Chinatown and SoHo. In post-Watergate America, political candidates were expected to make public their financial records, and indeed, Ferraro pledged to do that.

Perhaps she had not consulted with Zaccaro on the matter. Two weeks after her nomination, Ferraro announced that her husband would not permit her to release his business records.

More recently, both Bill and Hillary Clinton have been pros and cons for each other's campaigns. But, to date, Fung’s wife has had little public role, from a public relations standpoint, in his campaign.