Campaign Commercial Strategies in a Small State Gubernatorial Election.

In an attempt to contribute to the literature on mixed gender political campaign advertising, this paper analyzes the 2000 North Dakota Gubernatorial election. The paper employs content analysis of all the campaign commercials from both candidates, Heidi Heitkamp and John Hoeven. Utilizing a case-study approach, this study suggests that previous findings concerning mixed gender races need to be revisited. Specifically, past conclusions about candidate dress, voiceover gender, and issue/personal characteristic emphases of female and male candidates may ignore campaign specific environments. This study calls for further research combining the case-study and cross-sectional methodologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]