TIPA - Truth In Political Advertising

Ad #8: TV Ad: "Kitchen Sink"
by Pete Coors for U.S. Senate

Boulder Daily Camera
Talbott: It's fall, time to see the sleaze
October 6, 2004

Ken Salazar and Pete Coors have already raised $11.3 million, demolishing the record for political fund-raising in any Colorado race. Great. With a little more money, they could obliterate any semblance of rational discourse.

Salazar and Coors are running for Colorado's open seat in the U.S. Senate. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Republican, is stepping down. A departing incumbent leaves a political vacuum. And the fact is, vacuums suck.

Colorado last had an open Senate seat in 1996, when Sen. Hank Brown's departure generated rhetorical food fights between Wayne Allard and Tom Strickland. Between the two of them, they spent $4.5 million.

Allard won the race, but Strickland ran again. He returned in 2002, and Allard v. Strickland II was even more bitter and expensive than the original. That year, the sniping politicians raised $10.5 million — a new record that stood until this year.

You might remember the 2002 battle. It was nasty, brutish and distressingly short on information. Thanks to the power of expensive TV sound bites, Strickland may be forever known as a "lawyer-lobbyist," an ostensibly descriptive epithet that, with just the right intonation, sounds evil.

Ads for Strickland portrayed Allard as a lackey to special interests, a man who voted against hapless, crying children. Ads for Allard suggested that slick Strickland would incinerate neighborhoods.

In their most benign moments, these campaign ads were misleading — suggesting, for instance, that millionaire Strickland was a man of the people or that drill-and-burn Allard was an "environmentalist." At their worst, the ads were patently false.

This history bears noting because it forecast this year's squabble for the Senate.

Salazar, a Democrat, is Colorado's attorney general, in which capacity he has served with dignity and distinction. Coors, a Republican, is a businessman who lacks Salazar's public record but who seems to be a generally decent human being.

They have vastly different views on the health-care crisis, federal spending, tax cuts, education, abortion, Social Security, fighting terrorism. They probably have sharply divergent views on the environment, too. It's hard to tell on some issues, as Coors's statements are sometimes so vague as to lack all meaning.

A good advertising campaign — one that actually helped voters make an informed choice — would shed light on those differences. Instead, we get increasingly harsh and decreasingly revealing campaign ads.

A recent commercial for Salazar, for instance, shows Pete Coors saying, "I don't know what a common man is." The implication was that the statement revealed how out of touch Coors is. The ad did not show his subsequent contextual remarks, which were as follows: "A common man is somebody who lives in this country that works hard to provide jobs for others, who works, either providing for others or working for someone else. I've done both."

(Of course, Coors does not seem to know what a "common man is." In a campaign flier, Coors says the Senate needs "a few more people from Main Street back there — people like you and me." A chairman of a family business that happens to be one of the nation's largest breweries is not Mr. Main Street.)

The Coors folks, meanwhile, made the predictably bitter announcement that Salazar was playing "loose with the truth." They know whereof they speak.

A recent Coors commercial opined that Salazar is running a "negative campaign," making "down and dirty attacks to hide his own record." The ad then makes its own down-and-dirty attacks, including the false claim that, as an attorney, Salazar "represented a mining company that exceeded EPA pollution limits 22 times." In fact, Salazar did not represent the company, though he did accept campaign contributions from it.

The fallacious ad comes just after another Coors salvo that portrays Salazar as soft on national security. It might as well say he's chummy with Osama.

The usual response to these fall orgies of vacuous, unfair and deceptive advertising is to urge the politicians to call off their rabid ad dogs. That never works, because nasty, misleading and mendacious political advertising actually changes votes. If we didn't buy it, they wouldn't sell it.

Politicians are responsible for their unfair and unreasonable attacks. But until citizens flatly reject campaign sleaze, we will keep getting the government — and the governors — we deserve.

More mud in Senate race
By Gwen Florio, Rocky Mountain News
October 4, 2004

The latest slap in the whiplash-inducing battle of ads between U.S. Senate candidates Pete Coors and Ken Salazar landed Sunday, with a new spot from Coors that accuses his Democratic rival of - wait for it - running a negative campaign.

The ad follows by two days another from Coors, a Republican, linking Salazar's positions to those of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and implying that he's soft on national security.

And it comes less than a week after a Salazar ad that took a Coors quote out of context to suggest that the multimillionaire brewery scion is out of touch with the common man.

All of this bile is compliments of a race that has become the most expensive in Colorado history. The candidates' campaigns report they've raised about $6 million each.

The newest offering from the Coors camp accuses Salazar of, among other things, representing a mining company fined for a fish kill.

While an earlier Salazar campaign accepted contributions from the company, AngloGold, his former law firm never represented it, campaign manager Jim Carpenter said Sunday. But the firm, Parcel, Mauro, Hultin and Spaanstra, did represent other polluters.

Coors' spokeswoman Cinamon Watson said, "Pete's been attacked by Salazar and his friends . . . We're coming up to respond and to defend ourselves."

A recent ad by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee took the Coors Brewing Co. to task for past air and water pollution violations.

Monday, October 04, 2004 - Amid a record-setting pace in the campaign for the seat of retiring U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, the Peter Coors campaign has released a new attack ad.

The ad accuses Attorney General Ken Salazar of running a negative campaign and using "down and dirty attacks to hide his own record." It also claims that Salazar represented a mining company cited 22 times for pollution and that he tried to fire "hundreds of employees just before Christmas" as attorney general. Salazar also allegedly represented a company fined for a river dump that killed thousands of fish.

In fact, Salazar did not represent the mining company, but he did take campaign contributions from it. A news report at the time said the company responsible for the river dump was never fined.

Salazar did ask for the resignations of all attorneys in the attorney general's office, but he rehired all but 11, according to attorney general spokesman Ken Lane.

"They've taken things to a new level," said Salazar campaign manager Jim Carpenter. "This kitchen-sink ad suggests that Pete Coors can only win by trying to drive up Ken's negatives."

"They launched a negative attack on Pete, and we must defend ourselves," said Coors spokeswoman Cinamon Watson.

The Salazar campaign put up ads last week that criticize Coors for not being a "common man" and accuse the beer executive of being backed by the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. Carpenter said they were not attack ads but rather "contrast" ads.