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!