Video debut by Bachmann challenger included phone number not her own

When Tarryl Clark jumped into the fray to unseat U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann last week, her YouTube announcement showed the Democratic state senator from shoulders up, standing on Anoka’s Main Street. Also highlighted in the video: someone else’s phone number.

Backgrounds have blessed and bedeviled politicians since at least President Reagan, who raised the visual staging of events to an art form.

Soon though, the first President Bush pushed patriotic product placement past the point of absurdity at a New Jersey flag factory, and his son later posed prematurely before a “Mission Accomplished” banner.

In Minnesota last year, a TV ad for former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman set off alarms among observers who suspected (wrongly, the campaign insisted) that Coleman’s wife Laurie had been digitally inserted in front of a kitchen background. A campaign photo for Erik Paulsen, who won election to Congress, contained the classic composition error of running a pole into a subject’s head.

But none managed Clark’s feat: prominently displaying a phone number that has nothing to do with her campaign.

Dial the number on the banner seen in the video over Clark’s left shoulder and you reach a guy named Todd who is trying to lease a retail property across the street. He politely declined when given the opportunity to comment on his sudden insertion into the battle between Clark and Bachmann.