National GOP goes after Kratovil
The national Republican Party's House campaign arm is on the air on the Eastern Shore with a new ad that attacks incumbent Frank Kratovil's support for the federal stimulus program.
Republican Andy Harris, a veteran state lawmaker from the suburbs north of Baltimore, is challenging Kratovil, an endangered Democratic freshman, in one of the closest House contests in the country. The Democratic campaign committee was the first to enter the general election fight with TV advertising aimed at district voters.
The 30-second Republican spot, airing in the Salisbury market on broadcast TV and running on cable in the Baltimore market, tries to exploit Kratovil's support for the unpopular stimulus program. It also is designed to undermine his claims to independence, noting that he voted for Nancy Pelosi as House speaker (the ad does not explain, of course, that only Republicans voted against making Pelosi speaker, as is normally the case; votes for speaker routinely follow party lines).
The Republican commercial describes the stimulus as "failed," an assessment at odds with the judgment of many economists. According to an August report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the stimulus helped pull the nation out of the deepest recession since the Depression and provided jobs to between 1.4 million and 3.3 million people nationwide.
Kratovil voted against the stimulus the first time it went through the House in 2009, then approved the revised version. He has made public appearances in the district to highlight projects funded by the $814 billion spending measure.
The National Republican Congressional Committee, which targeted Kratovil even before he took office, financed new TV ads in 27 districts across the country over the weekend, including Maryland One, which takes in the entire Eastern Shore and portions of Baltimore, Harford and Anne Arundel counties.
An NRCC official said the committee has reserved more than $532,000 in TV ad time in the Maryland district through the Nov. 2 election, which is four weeks from Tuesday. Click here to view the latest ads, including the anti-Kratovil spot.
Kratovil's campaign took issue with the ad's attack on the Democrat's claim to independence. The Republicans used a Washington Post voting analysis that showed Kratovil voting with Pelosi 84 percent of the time (this is a cookie-cutter attack line that Republicans in Washington are using in campaigns across the country, attempting to drag down Democrats by linking them to the unpopular House speaker).
The Kratovil campaign notes that the Post analysis catalogs every vote taken by the House, including on relatively non-controversial topics like renaming post offices. By that yardstick, Kratovil voted with Republican Leader John Boehner 60 percent of the time, the Democrat's campaign said.
Kratovil's campaign prefers to cite the ratings of two respected Washington-based publications. Congressional Quarterly ranked the Eastern Shore congressman as the tenth most independent House member and National Journal placed him right-of-center in terms of ideology in its vote ratings, the Kratovil campaign says.
Comments
Are we really surprised?
To indulge in a little hyperbole, it seemed as if that last time these two faced off, it was akin to "Frank Kratovil will eat your first born" and "Andy Harris will kill your mother right in front of you."
I'm just surprised it took that Harris camp this long to fire shots like that.
Posted by: Stagger Lee | October 4, 2010 4:47 PM
I'm thinking we have the Supreme Court to thank for the magnitude of the barrage of attack ads against Democrats. In addition to the Republican Governors Association, with the help of $1 million from News Corp/Fox News head Rupert Murdoch, several of the garbage ads cite obscure groups apparently run by Republican operatives and apparently funded by the US Chamber of Commerce and large corporations. I'm so sick of the ads and the sleazy people who fund them, and I'm furious at the Roberts Court for doing this to the American people. What can ordinary people do about this except turn off our TV sets, which I've done.
Posted by: Anomyous | October 5, 2010 12:23 PM
Anomyous (sp?): The Republicans are just catching up to the Democrats who drove a Mack truck through this loophole in 2008. Remember the millions from George Soros and others on the left in 2008 that went into all sorts of "grassroots" efforts for the Obama juggernaut?
Posted by: Chestertownie | October 5, 2010 12:50 PM
George Soros is open about his donations, in contrast to David Koch and his brother who, according to a recent New Yorker magazine profile, hide behind an elaborate structure of so-called think tanks and sham non-profits and their committee offshoots for their funding of the far right.
Posted by: Anonymous | October 6, 2010 8:33 AM