We asked 10-year-olds to watch campaign ads. Here’s what politicians can learn from it

The first ad the 10-year-olds saw made some smile: Sharice Davids, the Democratic candidate for Kansas’ 3rd District, talked about how she was raised by a single mom, how she graduated from an Ivy League college.

Davids seemed nice. Then the two boys and two girls were asked to watch the next ad.

“Is this ad going to change that?” Adam Eastland asked.

It certainly did.

As with other campaign commercials the children gathered to watch, good and bad portrayals collided in sometimes jolting ways.

In the anti-Davids ad, they saw the former cage fighter driving her gloved fists into an opponent she’s pinned to the mat. Mixed in were images of rioting mobs.

Adam’s eyes grew wide, his face stricken.

“I did not think she was going to be a wrestler,” the Christa McAuliffe Elementary pupil said. He concluded that “violence isn’t acceptable,” and the others agreed.

To fifth-grader London Brooks, watching 30-second spots depicting candidates as either saintly or sinister produced “a game of tug-of-war in your brain.”

The Star recently brought in eight local 10-year-olds — four girls and four boys, with parental permission — to see what they make of the messaging in this election cycle’s campaign ads. They watched positive and negative ads in two races: the Missouri Senate race between incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill and Republican challenger Josh Hawley; and the 3rd District race where Davids is challenging incumbent Republican Kevin Yoder.

At 10, these children are grasping politics, but with a dose of little-kid innocence. They are also of a generation who are more likely to be streaming entertainment via Netflix, Hulu or YouTube than watch network television, limiting their exposure to political commercials.

Not more than a minute into watching the ads for Hawley, Anthony LaCroix had a question.

Moving his hands up and down, the pupil at Kansas City’s Crossroads Charter Academy said, “I wish I had some scale that would measure the rightness of these ads.”

A truth scale — how awesome would that be?

The kids also tended to believe what they saw.

One commercial featured a sincere Hawley explaining how his son’s disease hardened his support for insurance companies covering pre-existing medical conditions. The next says the Missouri attorney general is “lying again.”

“I knew it! He’s lying,” exclaimed Olathe fifth-grader Natalie Meyer, leading the charge in her group of four.

Colby Horton of Kansas City, North, wondered if those kids in the pro-Hawley ad were even Hawley’s. “Paid actors?” asked Colby, who attends Nashua Elementary. (Fact check: They’re his real kids.)

Colby wasn’t much kinder to McCaskill. An attack ad mentioned her spending 12 years away from Missouri.

“She left us,” Colby whimpered in jest, a finger running down his cheek. “She left poor Missouri to go to Washington where they pay her more.”

And all were befuddled by a McCaskill ad in which military veterans praise her — or do they?

“They are not happy,” said Alice Heisel, also of Olathe. Both she and Natalie attend Mahaffie Elementary.

The kids all thought the veterans seemed angry and were miffed at McCaskill, even after hearing her say “I approve this message.”

In the Davids-Yoder group, London, of Prairie Branch Elementary in Grain Valley, found inspiration in Davids.

A member of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Kansas City (and the one child who said she regularly watches TV news), London liked Davids’ back story.

From being a waitress, Davids knows “what regular people face,” asserted London, smiling. “It’s cool because she had to work hard.”

But North Kansas City student Julian Novero and Maddox Barnes of Kansas City leaned toward U.S. Rep. Yoder, partly because a positive ad featured his wife assuring viewers that he was “a great dad.”

Maddox, a pupil at Ewing Kauffman Elementary, said it was nice to know that “people in politics can love their families” and not spend all their time at work. But Julian, of Davidson Elementary in the North Kansas City district, perceptively noted that “outside their families, people can be very different.”

Then, a minute later, Yoder the great dad morphed into Yoder the Washington villain who, these young viewers were convinced, would raise taxes and seek riches, as a negative ad alleged. Adam and Maddox took at face value that Yoder was “greedy.” But at least he wasn’t stirring up riots and punching out people.

When the ads were over, the 10-year-olds had a suggestion: “Happy ads” were far better than mean ones.

Adam said if he’d ever run for office, “I’d just tell the truth.... Always.”

But that world for now seems far, far away.

“I’m a kid,” Julian said. “I don’t really have to bother much about this.”

To that, Maddox nodded. “Me neither.”

Then, there’s this thought from Alice: “I would be like, do I really have to vote?”

This story was originally published November 2, 2018 at 5:30 AM.