David Garth, 84, Dies; Consultant Was an Innovator of Political TV Ads

David Garth, a pugnacious and indefatigable pioneer of the political commercial, who helped elect governors, senators and four New York City mayors, died at his home in Manhattan. He was 84.

Garth was “one of the two people most responsible for the central role of television in modern American politics,” said Robert Shrum, a Democratic strategist who worked with him, singling out Charles Guggenheim, an adviser to Robert F. Kennedy, as the other. Garth’s political ads were characterized by an unusual feat of political jujitsu, one in which he would elevate potential liabilities into an asset by cajoling candidates to face a video camera earnestly and do something daring, even distasteful, in the ego-driven scrum of a campaign: admit their mistakes. Superimposed on his cinéma vérité commercials was a welter of printed information (a technique that he claimed he originated to cover a scratched videotape).