If a Senate Candidate Chops a Watermelon with an Ax in the Woods, Does It Make a Sound?

Possibly the worst campaign ad since Herman Cain's campaign manager smoked a cigarette on camera.
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E. W. Jackson was selected over the weekend as the lieutenant gubernatorial candidate of the Republican Party of Virginia. A Christian minister, he ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 2012 and has a history of making inflammatory statements. He also, apparently, has a history of making epically bad campaign ads, like the one above. From the uneven sound mixing to the aural special effects to the painted ax to the, well, splitting of watermelons in the drab dry of the off-season Virginia woods, this ad would have been an instant classic if anyone had cared about Jackson's senate run.

Instead, he lost his primary bid with less than 5 percent of the vote, placing fourth of four candidates. Now he'll be on the statewide ballot as Republican Ken Cuccinelli's running-mate -- well-positioned to become Virginia's No. 2, if he can avoid dragging down the ticket.

(h/t @badler)

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Garance Franke-Ruta is a senior editor covering national politics at The Atlantic. More

She was previously national web politics editor at The Washington Post, and has also worked at The American Prospect, The Washington City Paper, The New Republic and National Journal magazines. At The Prospect she won the 2007 Hillman Prize awarded to its group blog, "Tapped."

In 2006, she was fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, Mass., and in 2007, a summer fellow with The Iowa Independent, based in Des Moines, Iowa.

Garance has lectured at the Kennedy School, the Harvard Art Museums, Williams College, Wellesley College, Brandeis and Georgetown Universities, and taught in Georgetown's Master of Professional Studies in Journalism program. She also has made numerous appearances on national and regional television and radio programs.

Born in the South of France, Garance grew up in San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico; New York City, New York; and Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has resided in Washington, D.C., since graduating from Harvard in 1997.

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