GOP Rep. Mark Kirk bills himself as the independent choice for the 10th Congressional District. That's why news of this ad-buy should raise flags in the northern suburbs:
A Republican campaign group stormed into a hotly contested Northwest suburban congressional race today with a "substantial" ad buy to help U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk.
Freedom's Watch, which has connections to former top advisers to President George Bush, launched a cable ad accusing challenger Dan Seals of wanting to raise taxes.
The content of the ad is boilerplate conservative campaign rhetoric (you can read the Seals campaign's rebuttal here). What's more interesting is who paid for the spot.
Established last year, Freedom's Watch (FW) was sold as the right-wing equivalent of MoveOn.org. Yet while MoveOn is an organization that started with a simple petition and blossomed into progressive grassroots force of 3 million "non-shouters", FW was constructed as a top-down conservative messaging machine. Funded primarily by casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, it has close ties with hardcore neocons and the Bush administration -- ex-White House spokesman Ari Fleischer and a number of other former staffers are intimately involved in funding and operating the group. Just last year, FW ran ads that connected the war in Iraq with 9/11. And while it's had a fair number of internal setbacks, the groups still has considerable cash on hand this election year. In April's Lousiana special election, for example, the group spent $500,000 on advertisements for the Republican candidate.
FW's spokesman told the Daily Herald it was "fair to say" the organization would remain in the race until Election Day and that the ad buy was "substantial." In a statement yesterday, Seals spokesperson Elisabeth Smith responded, "Mark Kirk and his discredited and dishonest Washington hit men will do or say anything to distract voters from his shameful record of rubberstamping the failed Bush policies of the past eight years."
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