Dan Nowicki

The Republic | azcentral.com

Monique Luiz, the Phoenix resident who 52 years ago starred in the most famous, or infamous, political TV commercial of all time, is back in a new ad for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

In 1964, Luiz was the 3-year-old tot plucking the petals from a daisy in a haunting black-and-white spot for President Lyndon Johnson. Her counting turned into a missile countdown and the ad concluded with an atomic blast and mushroom cloud. The ad was intended to reinforce Democratic attacks on Republican challenger Barry Goldwater, a U.S. senator from Arizona, as a warmonger who could not be trusted with the nuclear arsenal.

Goldwater lost in a landslide, but his candidacy steered the Republican Party in a rightward direction that led to the 1980 election of President Ronald Reagan.

The original "Daisy" ad, officially titled "Peace, Little Girl" as produced by the New York agency Doyle Dane Bernbach, only aired once, on NBC, on Sept. 7, 1964. But it is still considered an all-time classic and has spawned countless knockoffs.

The "Daisy Girl," now all grown up, returns with a similar warning that Donald Trump, the 2016 Republican nominee, does not have the temperament to serve as commander-in-chief.

"This was me in 1964," Luiz says as the vintage footage appears onscreen. "The fear of nuclear war that we had as children — I never thought our children would ever have to deal with that again. And to see that coming forward in this election is really scary."

In a nod to the 1964 strategy, the Clinton campaign will run the new ad just once in battleground states, including Arizona.

In 2014, to mark the 50th anniversary of the "Daisy" ad's broadcast, Luiz spoke at length to The Arizona Republic about her role in the LBJ commercial. At the time, she said she regretted that the groundbreaking commercial helped usher in an era of political negativity.

"It's frustrating, and they say this ad helped contribute to that a lot," she said. "Oh, my gosh, I hate that. Not that I did it personally, but the ad that I was in contributed to it. So that's kind of disappointing."

Nowicki is The Republic's national political reporter. Follow him on Twitter at @dannowicki and on his official Facebook page.