(“Told Me” is a reference to a form letter a teenage McGrath received from her senator, informing her that women couldn’t be fighter pilots in a poetic twist, the senator was Mitch McConnell.) Many Democrats felt like they’d played too nice. McGrath was among a record number of women running for office in 2018, and her lack of experience had become a bragging right.
#THE WHISPERER 1235 ECHO PARK TV#
The aftershock of electing a reality TV star to the Oval Office ignited a fire. What had changed was his audience, which was newly radicalized post-Trump. They had helped to elect 11 governors, 10 senators and dozens of House members, and earned Putnam a reputation in Beltway circles as the go-to guy for candidates running tough races in red states. In many ways, “Told Me” was similar to the ads that had become Putnam’s specialty: sometimes clever, frequently bombastic, always memorable twists on the get-to-know-the-candidate cliche. The two-minute, online-only spot, titled “ Told Me,” featured the candidate in a leather bomber jacket on an airstrip with a fighter jet in the distance. (It’s a profession where you generally pick a side.) Even though his bona fides include co-producing a prime-time campaign infomercial for Barack Obama in 2008, Putnam’s best known for a 2017 ad for Amy McGrath, a then-unknown ex-Marine who was running for Congress in Kentucky. He’s been making ads for Democrats for over three decades. But mainly, it’s just that there’s only so long one can last in single-degree conditions without chairs, bathrooms or - most painful to Gross’s campaign manager - a single bar of cell service. Another time, one of his boots slipped out of its binding three-quarters of the way down. On the first go-round, Gross nailed the skiing but was too winded - we’re 7,000 feet above sea level - to deliver his lines. Part of it is the frustration of witnessing so many near-misses. Morale among the four-person crew is waning. The idea is for Gross to ski from a vertiginous icy crag at the top of the glacier down to a bluff, make a jaunty side stop, look straight into the camera and, in his old-timey radio-announcer baritone, say, “I can beat Dan Sullivan, but I need your help to do it.” He’s supposed to do this in a single take. So Putnam is spending these months filming Gross, 58, engaged in all manner of red-blooded Alaska activities, like motor-boating down windy rivers and hunting grizzly bears. But Gross has one important leg up on his competition, Republican incumbent and Donald Trump acolyte Dan Sullivan: He is a native Alaskan, while Sullivan’s from Ohio. Putnam is a political ad-maker for candidates like Gross, an orthopedic surgeon who has never held office and is running as a left-leaning independent in deep-red Alaska. After a few beats, Putnam gives an “all-good” signal to Gross, who’s far out of earshot, before retreating behind his camera tripod anchored by a mound of icy snow. His parka, a graphic blue-and-black pattern, make him look trim. As Putnam frames Gross with his index fingers and thumbs in that way artistes do, he does a head-to-toe survey of the candidate, double-checking for indicators of lagging swagger. Senate candidate Al Gross, that’s where Mark Putnam’s mind has gone. But two hours into directing a shoot for U.S.
Then there’s the temperature, which, on this day in mid-February, hovered between 4 and 9 degrees. Accessible only by helicopter, it’s the kind of place where simply standing upright requires a certain amount of core-muscle engagement. Of all the concerns that might arise while filming a political ad on a glacier in Alaska’s Chugach Mountains, the worry that it’s not rugged enough wouldn’t be high on the list.
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