The ad about Feinstein's hair, titled ``Hair Spray'' in Benjamin's news release, features a male announcer reading a would-be news bulletin:

``This just in from Washington. The National Oceanographic and Space Agency reports that the hole in the ozone layer has doubled in size due to all the hair spray used by Senator Dianne Feinstein over many, many years.''

The ad concludes with Benjamin's new slogan: ``Think different. No, really think different. Vote Green. Vote Medea Benjamin for Senate.''

The slogan is a conscious mimic of the ad campaign used by Apple Computer on behalf of its iMac computer.

The ``Hair Spray'' ad is one of four that will be broadcast this week on jazz, classic rock and Top 40 radio stations in Los Angeles and the Bay Area.

The campaign has purchased $50,000 worth of radio time for the ads, said Akilah Monifa, Benjamin's press officer.

Kam Kuwata, Feinstein's campaign manager, rather than comment on the content of the new ad, noted that the size of the radio buy is so small as to be ineffective.

``It's obvious they're trying to get an article in the newspaper about the ads, because no one's going to hear them,'' Kuwata said.

One of the other ads also takes a stab at whimsy. To the tune of the song ``Summertime,'' the ad has a woman singing, ``Voting Time. And the choice is easy. Medea's runnin' so don't vote for DiFi.''

The third ad talks about how money is ``polluting our political system'' against an aural backdrop of tinkling coins and chiming cash registers taken from the introduction to Pink Floyd's song ``Money.''

The fourth ad chastises Feinstein for declining to debate Benjamin.

All the ads conclude with the ``really think different'' slogan.

Benjamin aides openly admit they lifted that slogan from the Apple campaign, just as they acknowledge they copied an idea from novelist Upton Sinclair's 1934 campaign for governor.

Sinclair, best known as the author of the muckraking novel ``The Jungle,'' wrote ``I, Governor,'' a treatise that promised jobs to Depression- ravaged Californians through a huge government program.

The book by Sinclair, a lifelong socialist, became a best-seller and spurred a grassroots movement known as EPIC -- End Poverty in California -- that propelled him to the Democratic nomination for governor.

Benjamin has written her own 50-page pamphlet, ``I, Senator, and How, Together, We Transformed the State of California and the United States.''

The book envisions California in 2012, after a decade of progressive leadership by Green Party officials. It can be purchased at independent bookstores and will be sold for $2 at Green Party campaign events through the Nov. 7 election.

The Benjamin campaign also has purchased billboards in Los Angeles and San Francisco and print ads in alternative weekly newspapers in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento.

The ads feature a photo of Benjamin with Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader.

©2000 San Francisco Chronicle

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