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!