.START 

This is the year the negative ad, for years a secondary presence in most political campaigns, became the main event. 

The irony is that the attack commercial, after getting a boost in last year's presidential campaign, has come of age in an off-off election year with only a few contests scattered across the country. 

But in the three leading political contests of 1989, the negative ads have reached new levels of hostility, raising fears that this kind of mudslinging, empty of significant issues, is ushering in a new era of campaigns without content. 

"Now," says Joseph Napolitan, a pioneer in political television, "the idea is to attack first, last and always." 

A trend that started with the first stirrings of politics, accelerated with the dawn of the television age and became a sometimes-tawdry art form in 1988, has reached an entirely new stage. 

"To get people's attention these days," says Douglas Bailey, a political consultant, "your TV ad needs to be bold and entertaining, and, more often than not, that means confrontational.
And, unlike a few years ago, you don't even have to worry whether the ad is truthful." 

In 1989, as often as not, the principal fights in the major campaigns are prompted by the ads themselves. 

Take a look, then, at the main attack commercials that set the tone for Tuesday's elections in New York City, New Jersey and Virginia: 

New York City: The screen fills with a small, tight facial shot of David Dinkins, Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City. "David Dinkins failed to file his income taxes for four straight years," says a disembodied male voice. 

And then this television commercial, paid for by Republican Rudolph Giuliani's campaign and produced by Roger Ailes, the master of negative TV ads, really gets down to business.
Mr. Dinkins, the ad charges, also failed to report his campaign contributions accurately, hid his links to a failing insurance company and paid a convicted kidnapper "through a phony organization with no members, no receipts and no office." 

"David Dinkins," says the kicker, "Why does he always wait until he's caught?" 

"Nasty innuendoes," says John Siegal, Mr. Dinkins's issues director, "designed to prosecute a case of political corruption that simply doesn't exist." 

Stung by the Giuliani ads, Mr. Dinkins's TV consultants, Robert Shrum and David Doak, finally unleashed a negative ad of their own.
The screen shows two distorted, unrecognizable photos, presumably of two politicians. "Compare two candidates for mayor," says the announcer. "One says he's for banning cop-killer bullets.
The other has opposed a ban on cop-killer bullets.
One claims he's pro-choice.
The other has opposed a woman's right to choose." 

"Funny thing," says the kicker, "both these candidates are named Rudolph Giuliani." 

Who's telling the truth?
Everybody -- and nobody.
It's a classic situation of ads that are true but not always fully accurate. 

Mr. Dinkins did fail to file his income taxes for four years, but he insists he voluntarily admitted the "oversight" when he was being considered for a city job.
He was on the board of an insurance company with financial problems, but he insists he made no secret of it.
The city's Campaign Finance Board has refused to pay Mr. Dinkins $95,142 in matching funds because his campaign records are incomplete.
The campaign has blamed these reporting problems on computer errors.
And, says Mr. Dinkins, he didn't know the man his campaign paid for a get-out-the-vote effort had been convicted of kidnapping.
But, say Mr. Dinkins's managers, he did have an office and his organization did have members. 

Mr. Giuliani's campaign chairman, Peter Powers, says the Dinkins ad is "deceptive." The other side, he argues, "knows Giuliani has always been pro-choice, even though he has personal reservations.
They know he is generally opposed to cop-killer bullets, but that he had some reservations about the language in the legislation." 

Virginia: Democratic Lt. Gov. Douglas Wilder opened his gubernatorial battle with Republican Marshall Coleman with an abortion commercial produced by Frank Greer that analysts of every political persuasion agree was a tour de force.
Against a shot of Monticello superimposed on an American flag, an announcer talks about the "strong tradition of freedom and individual liberty" that Virginians have nurtured for generations.
Then, just as an image of the statue of Thomas Jefferson dissolves from the screen, the announcer continues: "On the issue of abortion, Marshall Coleman wants to take away your right to choose and give it to the politicians." 

That commercial -- which said Mr. Coleman wanted to take away the right of abortion "even in cases of rape and incest," a charge Mr. Coleman denies -- changed the dynamics of the campaign, transforming it, at least in part, into a referendum on abortion.
The ad prompted Mr. Coleman, the former Virginia attorney general, to launch a series of advertisements created by Bob Goodman and designed to shake Mr. Wilder's support among the very women who were attracted by the abortion ad. 

The Coleman counterattack featured a close-up of a young woman in shadows and the ad suggested that she was recalling an unpleasant courtroom ordeal.
A voice says, "C'mon, now, don't you have boyfriends?" Then an announcer interjects: "It was Douglas Wilder who introduced a bill to force rape victims age 13 and younger to be interrogated about their private lives by lawyers for accused rapists.
So the next time Mr. Wilder talks about the rights of women, ask him about this law he tried to pass." 

Mr. Wilder did introduce such legislation 17 years ago, but he did so at the request of a constituent, a common legislative technique used by lawmakers.
The legislation itself noted that it was introduced "by request," and in 1983 Mr. Wilder introduced a bill to protect rape victims from unfounded interrogation. 

"People have grown tired of these ads and Coleman has gotten the stigma of being a negative campaigner," says Mark Rozell, a political scientist at Mary Washington College. "Wilder has managed to get across the idea that Coleman will say anything to get elected governor and -- more important -- has been able to put the onus for all the negative campaigning on Coleman." 

Mr. Coleman said this week that he would devote the remainder of the political season to positive campaigning, but the truce lasted only hours.
By Tuesday night, television stations were carrying new ads featuring Mr. Coleman himself raising questions about Mr. Wilder's sensitivity to rape victims. 

New Jersey: The attacks began when Democratic Rep. James Florio aired an ad featuring a drawing of Pinocchio and a photograph of Mr. Florio's rival, Republican Rep. Jim Courter. "Remember Pinocchio?" says a female voice. "Consider Jim Courter." 

And then this commercial, produced by Bob Squier, gets down to its own mean and dirty business.
Pictures of rusted oil drums swim into focus, and the female voice purrs, "That hazardous waste on his {Mr.
Courter's} property -- the neighbors are suing for consumer fraud." And the nose on Mr. Courter's face grows. 

The only fraud involved, cry Mr. Courter's partisans, is the Florio commercial itself, and so the Courter campaign has responded with its own Pinocchio commercial, produced by Mr. Ailes.
In this one, the screen fills with photographs of both candidates. "Who's really lying?" asks a female voice. "Florio's lying," the voice goes on, because "the barrel on Courter's land . . . contained heating oil, was cleaned up and caused no pollution." 

Mr. Courter's long nose shrinks while Mr. Florio's grows. 

Who's telling the truth?
Stephen Salmore, a political scientist at New Jersey's Eagleton Institute, says it's another example of an ad that's true but not fully accurate.
Barrels were dumped on the Courter property, a complaint was made, but there is no evidence the barrels were a serious threat to the environment. 

Even so, according to Mr. Salmore, the ad was "devastating" because it raised questions about Mr. Courter's credibility.
But it's building on a long tradition.
In 1966, on route to a re-election rout of Democrat Frank O'Connor, GOP Gov. Nelson Rockefeller of New York appeared in person saying, "If you want to keep the crime rates high, O'Connor is your man." 

