“The DCCC has executed a devastatingly effective strategy of recruiting and empowering independent Democratic candidates with deep records of service, including in the military and the CIA,” said DCCC Spokesperson Tyler Law. “Further, the committee’s tactical decision to focus on candidate resources has allowed these candidates to beat CLF and the NRCC to the airwaves in the vast majority of districts, effectively setting the terms of the debate. The outcome has caused Republicans’ disgustingly un-Patriotic and politically inept attack ads to backfire and further imperil their majority.”
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House Republicans distort and dissemble in slashing TV ads | Politico
By Rachel Bade
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/10/09/republican-attack-ads-midterms-876287
Democratic House candidate Jason Crow received a Bronze Star for heroism in Iraq and a “lawyer of the year” award for his veterans advocacy. But according to his GOP adversaries, he has “neglected” Colorado veterans.
Virginia Democrat Abigail Spanberger spent nearly a decade fighting terrorists as an undercover CIA officer. But to hear Republicans tell it, she harbors terrorist sympathies.
Attacks ads have always been a staple of campaign season. But Republicans have twisted facts in some ads to an extraordinary degree as they fight to save their House majority, weaving narratives about Democratic candidates that are misleading at best — or blatantly false at worst.
In several ads, military vets — who count as some of Democrats’ best recruits to defeat sitting Republicans this year — have had their patriotism called into question. One spot insinuates that Spanberger, who is challenging Rep. Dave Brat’s (R-Va.), has ties to extremists because she taught at a Saudi Arabian-funded Muslim school where two infamous terrorists once attended. The CIA not only knew about the job, but later hired Spanberger and employed her for eight years.
Democrats say the spots, aired mostly by the outside GOP super PAC Congressional Leadership Fund and the National Republican Congressional Committee, smack of desperation. In some cases, local Republicans, religious leaders and newspaper editorial boards have denounced the attacks.
[…] “Republicans are having a heck of a time right now, and they’re just looking to attack anywhere they think they might be able to…. throwing whatever they have at the wall to see what sticks,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) told reporters at a Bloomberg breakfast last week, calling the attacks “smears.”
[…] Democrats argue that the charges have backfired and helped Democratic candidates raise money and gain ground on their Republican rivals. Spanberger’s campaign is now in a dead heat with Brat, according to a Sept. 24 internal poll, and raised more money after the terrorist ad launched than she did in the entire first quarter of 2017. Among likely voters, she’s up 5 points, her campaigns says.
[…] CLF’s recent attack on Ohio Democrat Aftab Pureval, for instance, accuses the Indian-Tibetan, first-generation American of aiding his former employer in making “millions” by “helping Libyans reduce payments owed to families of Americans killed by Libyan terrorism.”
[…] But Pureval wasn’t working for the Washington law firm that reached the restitution agreement when it was initially struck. When he did join the firm, Pureval worked on anti-trust litigation, not payments to the families of victims of the 1988 Lockerbie terrorist attack.
Not mentioned in the ad was the fact that former President George W. Bush backed the settlement negotiation with Libya — and that Rep. Steve Chabot, Pureval’s GOP opponent, did not object when it was approved in the House.
Local media called the attack “misleading.” And one American family who lost their father in the Libyan attack was so outraged by the video that they reached out to donate to Pureval’s campaign.
“My response to the CLF ad involved words that are best not repeated here,” Scott Rosen wrote in a letter to Pureval’s campaign. He was 5 years old when his father, Saul Mark Rosen, was killed in the Lockerbie bombing, leaving his mom to raise two children. “The attempt to connect you to the murder of my father was utterly beyond the pale.”
[….] But they haven’t seen the same results in other races — particularly in Colorado, where many Republicans believe Rep. Mike Coffman is going to lose. There, CLF portrayed Crow as a willing bystander to the massive Veterans Affairs Department backlog scandal. (The group recently pulled its ads from the district.)
[…] Backlash was swift. Local veterans who know Crow showed up at Coffman’s office to protest. Crow’s campaign highlighted the thousands of pro-bono hours he’d dedicated to helping veterans with substance abuse issues, as well as the “lawyer of the year” award he received in 2010 from the Denver Bar Association for his veterans advocacy.
[…] Some Republican candidates have launched similar attacks impugning the motives or patriotism of their opponents. West Virginia Republican candidate Carol Miller ran a clip of her Democratic rival, Richard Ojeda, saying “the United States of America is not the greatest country.” One vet in the spot accuses Ojeda, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, of “stepping on the graves of every dead soldier.”
What Ojeda actually said is that U.S. isn’t the greatest country because homelessness is rampant, the health care system is lacking and the opioid epidemic has been allowed to fester. Ojeda issued his own ad in response, talking about the names of fallen soldiers tattooed his back.
“My military record and my love of country has come under fire … by Carol Miller,” an angry Ojeda said in the video filmed before a veterans memorial. “How dare she! A millionaire, who has enjoyed a life of privilege under the very freedoms that I have fought for.”
In New York, Republicans have accused Democratic hopeful Antonio Delgado of “attacking our democracy” because the former rapper once sung about finding peace in the Middle East. In the years-old anti-war jam, Delgado, who went on to graduate from Harvard Law School and become a Rhodes Scholar, says “God bless America, God bless Iraq, God bless us all.”
[…] Nearly 20 local clergy members denounced the attacks for their racial undertones; Delgado is African-American. A local radio station said it recently pulled an ad sponsored by CLF for their “inaccuracy.” (CLF disputes that the ad was removed, arguing that PAC officials took it down of their own accord.) Even the district’s former Republican congressman, Chris Gibson, has expressed discomfort.
“Shame on you!” the religious leaders wrote to Faso, asking him to denounce the ads, which he has not done. “This tactic should be called out for what it is, a thinly veiled, racist attack for the purpose of insinuating fear in the voters in our district.”