Voters group bashes anti-Grant ad
BOISE – A national nonpartisan group is decrying the latest attack ad in Idaho’s 1st District congressional race.
The Washington, D.C.-based Club for Growth started running a TV ad targeting Democrat Larry Grant on Saturday and reported to the Federal Election Commission that it spent more than $180,000 just that day on the ad. The ad claims to cite Grant’s responses to a Project Vote Smart survey about key issues, using his answers to criticize “liberal Larry Grant.”
But Project Vote Smart, a group founded by such political opposites as former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and Sens. Barry Goldwater and George McGovern, specifically forbids the use of its candidate survey results in “any negative campaign activity, including advertising, debates and speeches.”
Adelaide Kimball, a board member and senior adviser at Montana-based Project Vote Smart, said of the new anti-Grant ad, “They attack this candidate and completely misrepresent his responses.”
Project Vote Smart put in two calls to the Club for Growth complaining about the ad on Monday, she said, but hadn’t heard back. Former Congressman Pat Toomey, president of the Club for Growth, was out of the office and couldn’t be reached for comment Monday afternoon.
On its Web site, the Club for Growth said that it’s “considering running similar advertisements across the country.”
The Club for Growth spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on an independent campaign in the 1st District GOP primary, running TV commercials attacking second- and third-place finishers Robert Vasquez and Sheila Sorensen as tax-raisers. The group endorsed Bill Sali, who won the six-way race with 25.8 percent of the vote.
Sali’s campaign spokesman, Wayne Hoffman, said Monday that he hadn’t seen the new ad and couldn’t comment on it. It’s the second independent attack ad against Grant to start running in Idaho in a week; the first was paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Project Vote Smart on Monday released statistics showing that the number of congressional candidates nationwide responding to its issue surveys has plummeted from 72 percent in 1996 to 48 percent today. Kimball said fear of misuse of the survey is prompting many candidates not to respond.
“Not only does it hurt this candidate and this candidate’s campaign, but it also directly strips citizens of information they really need in order to be smart voters,” Kimball said.
Project Vote Smart on Monday announced its new “Voter’s Self-Defense System,” which includes not only the candidates’ survey responses, but also legislative voting records, searchable speeches and public statements, and more. The information is online at www.vote-smart.org, or can be found toll-free at (888) VOTE SMART.
Kimball said Project Vote Smart was founded to help voters sort through campaign propaganda and find honest information on where candidates stand so they can make informed choices.
“Our intention is to put it in the hands of every citizen around the country so they can defend themselves against this junk,” she said. “I think it’s a disaster that candidates are running campaigns the way they are. … The public is powerless. That’s why we established the voter self-defense system.”
The Club for Growth’s anti-Grant ad claims that Grant told Project Vote Smart that he would “keep the death tax” and “increase welfare spending.” No questions with that wording are in the Vote Smart survey. Grant did say in the survey that he wants to “revamp estate tax to make it more fair” and that he favored increasing funding for child-care programs and housing assistance.
Sali didn’t respond to the Project Vote Smart survey.
Meanwhile, both candidates have new TV ads starting throughout the district. Sali’s feature GOP state Reps. Lawerence Denney, R-Midvale, and Julie Ellsworth, R-Boise, praising him, along with a blind woman and a dental clinic operator praising his work on legislation.
Grant’s new ad features comments from other Republican leaders criticizing Sali.