Terry, “campaigning” last month in New Hampshire. (Photo by Flickr user Marc Nozell)

Back in 2010, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton was challenged from the far, far, far right. So distant on the conservative spectrum was Missy Reilly Smith, that every proper Republican disowned her. Smith only got a scintilla of attention because of her single-issue campaign—a jarringly visual crusade against abortion—was able to buy airtime on local television during the run-up to the otherwise insignificant (in D.C., at least) general election.

Smith’s ads, to which television stations affixed viewer advisories, were nothing more than slideshows of bloody and dismembered aborted fetuses while a voiceover inveighed against Norton and President Obama for their pro-choice positions. (DCist viewed the ads back then, and they are disturbingly graphic, and definitely not safe for work.)

Smith in her 2010 ad.

Why would stations assent to run such gruesome imagery when advertisements are normally subject to internal review? They had to. Federal election law states that within 45 days of an election, no candidate’s advertisement can be barred from the publicly owned airwaves. The ads, of course, didn’t make a dent on Norton, who won her latest term with 118,000 votes to Smith’s 8,100.

But it set an example that is set to be copied across the country. During the Super Bowl, no less.

ThinkProgress reports that Randall Terry, a zealous anti-abortion activist who is running for president, has garnered enough money to buy ads during the big game that will feature content as graphic as Smith’s. Not everyone will see Terry’s ad, though, as he’s buying spots on NBC affiliates serving states with primaries within 45 days of the Super Bowl on February 5.

Oh, and Terry’s running as a Democrat, of all things, even though he’s spent his career blocking sidewalks outside women’s health practitioners; moving around the country to run for office, always unsuccessfully; and celebrating the May 2009 murder of Kansas abortion provider George Tiller. He’s already run ads, which are viewable at his campaign site (again, NSFW), in Iowa, New Hampshire and other early primary states.

Fortunately, it appears that Super Bowl viewers in the Washington area will not have to endure Terry’s sanguinary missive. His list of target markets (which somehow invokes Tim Tebow, of all people) seems to focus on the Midwest and West. Even though the Virginia primary on March 6 falls well within the 45-day window in which no candidate’s ads may be rejected, it appears (for now) that Terry did not muster up enough cash to buy local airtime on any of the D.C. stations that broadcast in Northern Virginia.

Phew.