The manager of Janet Protasiewicz’s successful campaign for the Wisconsin Supreme Court claims images of horses were subtly hidden in attack ads against her conservative opponent, Daniel Kelly, as an inside joke about a voter saying that Kelly looked like the kind of person who fornicates with horses. Alejandro Verdin told “The Downballot” podcast last month that the joke stemmed from a focus group in a previous campaign in which a participant said of Kelly: “This guy looks like a horse-fucker.” Verdin explained that Ben Nuckels, a media consultant for Protasiewicz’s campaign, then decided to “take things to another level” by subtly hiding “visuals of horses in nearly every negative ad he produced against Dan Kelly.” One ad appears to have a small horse standing in front of a plant pot in the background of the shot, while another radio spot featured audio of a horse neighing at the beginning. “This is just sick,” Kelly told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel when he was asked about Verdin’s comments. “Wisconsinites ought to be appalled by this kind of vulgarity and vileness.”
