Are the Bush-bashers riding to the rescue of the Bush-hugger?

DVT is all over the news that the Bush-bashing 527 group called The Media Fund has purchased ad time on Sioux Falls TV stations. It's not known yet if the ad will be anti-Bush or anti-Thune, but if it's anti-Thune, it will be the height of absurdity in this campaign: a Bush-basher riding to the rescue of Daschle the Bush-hugger, who constantly says in his ads that he's "voted with President Bush more often than not."

Rancher in Daschle ad received $15,907 due to Thune's work

Gene S. Williams, a rancher who appears in the most recent Daschle drought ad attacking Thune, received $15,907 in disaster payments in 2002. This is the same year he attacks John Thune for purportedly failing to do something for people suffering from the drought. That $15,907 is obviously money out of the $1 billion in assistance Thune pushed through that year. In 2002, Gene Williams got $15,907 in disaster payments because of John Thune's efforts. He got $0 from Tom Daschle.

And of course major disaster assistance was not passed and signed into law until 2003, AFTER Daschle lost his majority leadership position.

Daschle wanted an issue, not a solution, on the drought in 2002, and the same thing is happening this year.

Below is a transcript of Daschle's drought ad:

Tom Daschle: I'm Tom Daschle and I approve of this message.

Margaret Nachtigall, Rancher, Owanka, SD: We're in the third year of an ongoing drought. People are selling the major part of their herds.

Gene Williams, Rancher, Interior, SD: John said that he would stand up to the President when he needs to but when it came to the drought a couple of years ago and he had an opportunity to, he didn't.

Nachtigall: President Bush didn't look at our situation at all. He basically ignored us. I would like to have seen Congressman Thune talk to the President and suggest that they do something for the people who are suffering from the drought in South Dakota.

Williams: For Congressman Thune to sit there and let the President tell us that we just needed to tighten our belt and get along with what we've got was kind of a slap in the face as far as I'm concerned. If there's ever a better opportunity to stand up to the President in dealing with the drought I don't know where you're going to find it and if he didn't do it then I don't think he'll do it in the future. When you're looking out for the President instead of South Dakotans you're not doing what we put you there for.

So much for Daschle's pledge to ban third party ads

DVT and Sibby are all over a full page ad that appeared in the Argus Leader today paid for by a pro-Daschle 527 group called "Focus South Dakota." Obviously, Daschle's "Third Party Ad Ban" pledge was as useless as the scrap of paper it was printed on. But you already knew that.

DVT notes that Jeff Masten, one of the three people running "Focus South Dakota," actually wrote a letter to Roll Call defending David Kranz, the dean of South Dakota political reporters after Roll Call exposed Kranz as the person behind the "hysterical bashing" of Senator Pressler in the Argus Leader.

Sibby notes that almost all of the money funding "Focus South Dakota" is from out-of-state interests.

Daschle's Second Amendment ad

Jennifer Sanderson of the Argus Leader delivers another stellar analysis in her latest "AdWatch" headlined "Democratic Sen. Tom Daschle walks hunting grounds and states his commitment to the right to bear arms." Excerpt:

“One thing that is predictable in an election year is that Tom Daschle will appear somewhere in fluorescent orange, carrying a shotgun and touting his respect for the Second Amendment,” said John Thune, the Republican challenger.

“Tom Daschle gets an ‘F’ from the NRA. How are you an advocate for the Second Amendment if the largest gun owners association in America flunks you?” Thune asked. “Daschle has consistently voted with the anti-gun lobby. When you’re in a state like South Dakota, with a very gun-owning culture, and you vote against that culture, you have to spend a lot of money to convince people you’re not.”

[...]

Thune is correct in his assessment of Daschle’s rating from the NRA. The group gives Daschle an “F.” In contrast, the Brady Campaign reports a 78 percent rating for the incumbent.

Thune has yet to run an ad that even mentions Daschle

Senator Daschle has begun running an ad that states in part "John Thune is running another negative, misleading ad." There's one major problem, though. John Thune has not run a single ad that even mentions Senator Daschle. Even the Argus Leader says Daschle is wrong to say John Thune is running a negative ad:

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, not John Thune, paid for the gas-tax ad. In this respect, Daschle's spot is wrong because it deems the source commercial a "THUNE AD."

Even the Rapid City Journal says Daschle can't get his facts straight:

In response to the NRSC's gas-tax ad, Daschle's campaign responded with an ad that accuses Thune of running the "negative ad." Of course, it isn't an ad from the Thune campaign, but from the NRSC.

Clearly, it's Senator Daschle who is running the negative and misleading ad.

New poll: Thune leading, 50%-47%

DVT reports the latest poll by Rasmussen, and the most astounding number is Daschle's unfavorability rating (45%!). There's lots of clock left in this race, but I think the Daschle campaign is running out of options. They've been running ads for over a year, and these days, you can't watch even a small amount of television without seeing at least a couple of Daschle ads. My girlfriend told me she even saw a Daschle ad on The Learning Channel's "Trading Spaces" recently. Daschle's ad saturation isn't working (it seems the more he advertises, the further he sinks in the polls), and I think the only option left to him, particularly when Daschle's unfavorability rating is so high, is to start running ads that will drive up Thune's unfavorability rating.

Aberdeen newspaper reports on possible ethics violation

Scott Waltman at the Aberdeen American News reported a story Friday headlined "Staff campaigning not violation; Rules allow Daschle employee to work in Senate office, on re-election bid." Excerpt:

Steve Erpenbach is the state director for Daschle, a Democratic senator seeking reelection this fall. He's also doing campaign work for his boss.

Daschle's camp said Erpenbach is taking advantage of a Senate ethics rules clause that allows two members of a senator's official staff to do campaign work if certain stipulations are met.

Under the rule, up to two members of a senator's official staff can do campaign work if they:

• Have done 40 hours of official Senate-related (not campaign) work in a week;

• Do the campaign work on their own time; and

• Aren't on government property.

Waltman's story has no information about whether Erpenbach did in fact do 40 hours of Senate-related work, or whether Erpenbach did in fact do the campaign work on his own time. Waltman seems to have just taken the Daschle camp's word for it. It's mainstream investigative journalism at its finest.

For a refresher on this story, click HERE.

Senate ethics

There's still no story in the mainstream South Dakota press on whether Steve Erpenbach, Senator Daschle's State Director, violated the dictates of the Senate Ethics Manual when he coordinated a response to the US Chamber of Commerce ad for the Daschle campaign. For a refresher on the details of this story, see my post last week headlined "BOMBSHELL: E-mail indicates Daschle state director illegally doing campaign work."

Don Frankenfeld

Senator Daschle's latest tear-stained ad, in which he has his four Republican supporters decry negative ads, ends with a scene depicting an avuncular fellow by the name of Don Frankenfeld. Frankenfeld makes the following statement:

"Ads that attack Senator Daschle in a way that is unfair, it's nonsense, and it's got to stop."

Considering this Daschle ad is in response to a US Chamber of Commerce ad criticizing Daschle's coziness with "wealthy trial lawyers" and blocking medical malpractice reform at the behest of these wealthy trial lawyers, it's interesting to note that Don Frankenfeld is in the business of offering expert witness services to trial lawyers. At his business website, Frankenfeld even has an audio excerpt of Senator Daschle plugging his business at the 2003 ATLA convention in San Francisco. It would seem that Frankenfeld has a pecuniary interest in appearing in these Daschle ads.

I discussed Frankenfeld's ties to Daschle in a long post earlier this year.

Daschle plays up his victim status with tear-stained e-mails

Rapid City Journal political reporter Denise Ross has a piece in today's edition headlined "Campaign ads go on the attack." Excerpt:

The chamber's $300,000 investment over two weeks outpaced the ad spending of either campaign, according to Daschle's campaign. Daschle's campaign workers pointed out a corresponding drop in Thune's own planned TV spending during the two weeks the chamber ads will run.

Daschle said his Republican challenger should intervene.

"If John does detest negative ads as much as he says, then now is the time to stand up for the people of South Dakota and tell his friends that South Dakota deserves better," Daschle said in a news release.

Then, Daschle's campaign sent out an e-mail, the ink smeared by tears over the deplorable ads, with a link for supporters to give money to Daschle's campaign so something can be done about this.

Then the Daschle campaign put up its own ad, with a string of Republicans decrying negative ads and one calling directly on Thune to "stop running negative ads." Then Thune's campaign manager called Daschle a liar.

"John Thune has not aired a negative ad. They are lying and run their own negative ad when they accuse him of doing so," Dick Wadhams said.

(Emphasis added.) I don't quite understand why Daschle is so troubleddisappointedalarmed by these Chamber of Commerce ads. The ad says that Daschle "killed medical malpractice lawsuit reform" and "sided with the wealthy trial lawyers." Well, that's indisputable. Daschle is happy to take trial lawyer money (they're his biggest donors) and receive awards in New York City for blocking tort reform. If Daschle is proud to be a strong voice for trial lawyers in New York, why is he bemoaning the fact that the Chamber of Commerce is letting South Dakotans know he's a strong voice for trial lawyers?

Daschle jumps the gun on victimhood

A prominent feature of Senator Daschle's campaign is to cast himself as a victim of the "evil Republicans" (to use Argus Leader editor Patrick Lalley's phrase) and their negative ads. The problem is that in order to cast himself as a victim of a negative ad, there first has to be a negative ad. This week, Daschle has reached into his grab bag of video footage showing people castigating negative ads and produced a new ad which contains the following quote from a woman named Kris Graham:

"As a Republican, I would like to tell John Thune to stop running the negative ads."

Um, John Thune has not run a single negative ad. The fact that the Daschle campaign would run this quote in an ad is itself negative, because it maliciously distorts John Thune's record. When the Argus Leader and KELO-TV run an "Ad Watch" of this ad (and they should) the fact that John Thune has not run a single negative ad should be reported if they are interested in accurately reporting the whole story.

Isn't it interesting that Daschle is so eager to be a victim that he's willing to conjure up a phantom negative ad made by Thune? The paranoia* must have finally reached the delusional stage.

DVT has more.

*Tom Daschle's campaign motto is "Only the paranoid survive."

US Chamber of Commerce TV ad

Yesterday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce announced an ad campaign critical of Tom Daschle to begin airing in South Dakota next week. You can view the ad by clicking HERE.

The ad explains that Daschle has stood in the way of tort reform time after time (perhaps because trial lawyers are his biggest contributors), and that Daschle's stance is causing health insurance rates to rise.

Nethercutt campaign discusses Daschle's ads

George Nethercutt is running for the Senate against Democratic incumbent Patty Murray in the state of Washington. Recently, the Nethercutt campaign noted that Murray's television ads look remarkably similar to Senator Daschle's television ads, prompting Nethercutt's campaign manager to ask "Is Patty running in Washington or South Dakota? It’s a long time since she had a bake sale, but there’s no excuse for using a cookie cutter."

Dems threaten lawsuits whenever there's a critical ad

DVT notes (via Instapundit) that the Democrats are making a habit of using lawyers' threats to keep the Club for Growth's ads off the air.

Last year, something similar to this happened when the Club for Growth ran an ad in South Dakota informing South Dakotans that Senator Daschle had just purchased a $2 million home on ritzy Foxhall Road in Washington, DC. The Rapid City Journal published a story on the matter headlined "Anti-Daschle ads prompt complaints over copyright."

The Club for Growth's Stephen Moore wrote in a piece headlined "Tom’s House Is a Very, Very, Very Nice House" that Daschle "worked tirelessly to pull the ads off the airwaves."

His protests have been almost comical. His first complaint was that the ads are misleading because he really does favor lower taxes. Hmmm, that's news to anyone who even casually follows politics in Washington. For at least the past ten years, Daschle has voted against anything that even has the whiff of a tax cut. He was the deciding vote in the Senate for Bill Clinton's mega-tax hike.

Next we heard from the '60s rock group Crosby, Stills, and Nash, which accused us of copyright violation, by parodying their music, and demanded that we cease and desist from running these ads. The law is very clear that this kind of usage is no copyright violation. And doesn't it seem like just yesterday that liberals were fanatics on First Amendment rights. Now they do everything in their power to suppress political speech — if it comes from the right side of the political spectrum. .

Daschle solicits out-of-staters to sign his anti-out-of-stater petition

Horologium notices that Senator Daschle is now advertising on liberal out-of-state blogs soliciting out-of-staters to sign a petition urging out-of-staters to keep out-of-state ads off the air in South Dakota. If that's not enough to leave you awestruck by the cynicism of it all, there's also the matter of all of the out-of-state money Tom Daschle is raising. Quentin Riggins is on the case.

Chamber of Commerce newspaper ads

According to a piece in The Hill, a Capitol Hill publication, headlined "Business ads targeting Daschle in South Dakota," the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is running ads in 11 South Dakota newspapers urging Tom Daschle to pass the corporate tax bill. I didn't see the ad in today's edition of the Argus Leader. If anybody has seen this ad, please let me know.

Daschle's latest ad

I guess everyone in the state except me, until now, has seen Tom Daschle's latest ad, in which various Daschle Republicans complain about "negative ads." You can view the Daschle ad in question HERE. One reader notes that Steve Grubbrud of Huron, one of the people in the Daschle ad, is standing in front of a cornfield in which the corn plants have tasseled, and saying "I hate these negative ads, Tom Daschle's a good man, he's done a lot of good things for South Dakota. I'm a Republican and there's a lot of Republicans in South Dakota that feel the same way as I do."

Corn plants don't tassel until late summer, meaning that this Daschle ad, or at least the segment with Steve Grubbrud, was in the can almost a year ago. It leads one to ask exactly what negative ad Steve Grubbrud was upset about at the time. It also says something about the singlemindedness with which Tom Daschle approaches re-election, busily taping ads and running them over a year before election day. What's interesting is that this singleminded attitude isn't getting results for Daschle in the polls. Daschle can't break 50%, and his challenger, who has yet to run a single ad, only trails him by a few points.

Sibby on a roll

Sibby is on a roll with his efforts to expose the misleading Daschle ad in the Mitchell Daily Republic that appeared recently (Daschle was taking credit for something he voted against). The MDR has now responded with an editorial. You can find more background info HERE.

Breaking: Daschle admits his calls broke the law

KELO 1320 AM radio is reporting that the Daschle campaign is admitting that it violated campaign laws (namely the new Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act) with its attack phone calls last Friday and yesterday made to practically everybody in the state. The phone calls did not have the disclaimer at the end saying "I'm Tom Daschle, and I approve of this message." All political communications are required to have this disclaimer. You can read more HERE. I'm not buying the argument that this was an "inadvertent oversight" as the Daschle camp is claiming. That they didn't tack on the disclaimer to the phone call helped the Daschle camp immensely. If people were told that Tom Daschle had approved this phone call, the whole purpose of the call would have backfired. People's ire would be directed at Tom Daschle instead of John Thune. It's unsurprising that this "oversight" cut in favor of the Daschle campaign.

The disclaimer provision is not some extremely technical and complicated part of BCRA, as the Daschle campaign is disingenuously trying to argue. The Daschle campaign has run millions of dollars of radio and television ads that have the disclaimer on them. Obviously, the campaign is very familiar with the disclaimer reqirements. Also, Tom Daschle was a huge proponent of BCRA. BCRA was one of his priorities when he was the majority leader of the Senate, and Daschle was the major force behind the passage of BCRA in the spring of 2002. It's ridiculous to argue that he would have "overlooked" the disclaimer. The disclaimer provision was a big deal when BCRA was being debated. The bottom line is that the Daschle campaign has engaged in a strategy of breaking the law in order to benefit politically.

Now it remains to be seen whether the Argus Leader will report this story in tomorrow's edition. Greg Belfrage is reporting that they will be.

On February 11th of this year, almost three months ago, the Argus Leader ran a 922-word front page story (1A) headlined "Thune spending questioned" written by Mike Madden and David Kranz. (I've discussed this story HERE.) The story was about MERE ALLEGATIONS that John Thune had broken campaign laws. In the story, variations of the phrase "Thune broke the law" were used three times. Now that Tom Daschle has ADMITTED that he broke campaign laws, will the Argus Leader use multiple variations of the phrase "Daschle broke the law" at all? Will the story be on the front page (1A) of the AL? Will it be nearly 1000 words? I think this February 11th negative story on John Thune will be a good standard to compare what the AL reports on Daschle breaking the campaign laws tomorrow.

Kudos to Greg Belfrage for doing the legwork on this story.

UPDATE: DVT has more.

Daschle on ads: It's the first thing that pops into my mind

DVT discusses a piece that appeared in Roll Call today headlined "South Dakota Reality TV;
Daschle Has Advertised Steadily While Thune Stays off the Airwaves." Excerpt from the Roll Call piece:

Daschle has been on television almost continually since July 2003; in that time he has run 11 different campaign commercials, an effort that has cost him roughly $1 million. Daschle has spent nearly $10 million total on his re-election effort since 1999.

Thune has yet to run a single ad since formally entering the race at the beginning of the year, and his campaign said no immediate plans are in the works to take to the airwaves.

Interestingly, a 1991 Washington Post piece reveals how Tom Daschle thinks primarily in terms of political ads. The piece, dated November 26, 1991, and headlined "On Capitol Hill, Symbols Triumph;
Substance Suffers Amid Frustrating Fiscal Pressures, Political Fears" contains the following quote from Tom Daschle:

"I dare say the first thing that comes to my mind in a vote is: Can it [the issue] pass the 30-second test, how successful will my opponent be in applying it to a 30-second ad? It's a screen that comes up whenever there is a vote," said Sen. Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.).