NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Wednesday, October 10th, 2012

Ad Watch: Gubernatorial air war gets more intense; more campaigns go up on television

Wel­come back to Ad Watch, our newest spe­cial series, which is run­ning week­ly from now until elec­tion week. The pur­pose of this series is to attempt to cat­a­log, or index, the many cam­paign ads that are going up on tele­vi­sion (and some­times radio) to influ­ence elec­tions in the Pacif­ic North­west. In each install­ment, we’ll briefly describe ads we’ve seen that are being paid for by can­di­dates, bal­lot mea­sure coali­tions, polit­i­cal par­ties, or shad­owy spe­cial inter­ests mas­querad­ing as grass­roots groups, and pro­vide links so you can watch the ads for yourself.

This week in Ad Watch:

  • Pre­serve Mar­riage Wash­ing­ton, the cam­paign to defeat Ref­er­en­dum 74, is said to be launch­ing its first tele­vi­sion spot tomor­row, which will urge vot­ers to reject mar­riage equal­i­ty. It will be air­ing on broad­cast and cable sta­tions, we’ve heard. (UPDATE: The ad is now on YouTube… the dis­hon­est name of the spot is “Not About Equal­i­ty”).
  • Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mau­reen Walsh, one of the few Repub­li­cans in the state Leg­is­la­ture who vot­ed for mar­riage equal­i­ty, is the star of Wash­ing­ton Unit­ed for Mar­riage’s newest TV spot urg­ing an Approve vote on R‑74. It’s enti­tled “Free­dom”. “I think to myself, how could I deny any cou­ple, gay or straight, that bond of mar­riage?” Walsh says in the ad.
  • Also launch­ing a new ad tomor­row is Suzan Del­Bene, whose cam­paign has been off the air since the August win­now­ing elec­tion. (UPDATE: Del­Bene’s first gen­er­al elec­tion ad has been released. The spot is titled “Ref­er­ee”, and stress­es that Del­Bene will work to ensure mid­dle and low­er income fam­i­lies are treat­ed fair­ly in our nation’s capital).
  • The newest Jay Inslee ad, “Pre­serve”, is a response to an ear­li­er ad paid for by sur­ro­gates for Rob McKen­na, which false­ly claims that Inslee would not pro­tect pen­sions for fire­fight­ers. In “Pre­serve”, fire­fight­ers from dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties across Wash­ing­ton con­demn the Repub­li­can ad as false and urge vot­ers to sup­port Inslee rather than McKenna.
  • The Repub­li­can Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion (RGA), which is spend­ing heav­i­ly to elect Rob McKen­na, is hit­ting Jay Inslee with a new ad (“Does­n’t Get It”) which dis­hon­est­ly attempts to por­tray Inslee as hos­tile to small busi­ness. (In truth, Inslee has fre­quent­ly stood up to D.C. pow­er bro­kers on behalf of fam­i­lies and small busi­ness­es in his dis­trict. For instance, he coura­geous­ly vot­ed against George W. Bush and Hen­ry Paulson’s bank bailout bill).
  • Allies of Jay Inslee, mean­while, have unveiled yet anoth­er spot in their “Real McKen­na” series. This one is called “Kid­ding”. It does­n’t break any new ground as far as mak­ing alle­ga­tions, but it does fea­ture some new faces. The Seat­tle Times’ Susan Keheller already looked at the claims made in a sim­i­lar ad, and con­clud­ed that “[t]his is one of those claims that links two truths in a way that cre­ates a false impression.”
  • The lat­est Obama/Biden ad, “Strong Leader”, is based on excerpts from a speech giv­en on Oba­ma’s behalf by New Hamp­shire Gov­er­nor John Lynch. Pre­sum­ably, it was cre­at­ed explic­it­ly for New Hamp­shire, which has vot­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic dur­ing the last two pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, but is not con­sid­ered reli­ably Democratic.

That’s all for this edi­tion. Let us know if there’s any­thing we missed!

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