Check out the new attack ads from Jim Tedisco, the Republican candidate in next Tuesday’s special election for Kirsten Gillibrand’s old House seat. The first one belongs to that very novel category of attack, practiced by all sides in politics — the kind that blasts his Democratic opponent Scott Murphy for running attack ads:
Some things should be noted about the citations here, such as the Albany Times Union saying a Murphy ad was “unfair.” To be exact, the ad was from the DCCC, though the Murphy campaign itself did stand by it. On the other hand, the same newspaper recently eviscerated an ad from Tedisco, as its staff has gone about policing the claims on both sides.
Specifically, that previous fact-check from the Times-Union went after Tedisco for claiming that Murphy supports the AIG bonuses. Which brings us to the next Tedisco ad — which has the AIG claim as the centerpiece, as Tedisco has been using it for the past week:
The announcer declares that among Murphy’s offenses, he “supports the law allowing outrageous bonuses to AIG millionaires.”
Late Update: Murphy spokesman Ryan Rudominer gave this response to TPM:
“Down in the polls and desperate, career Albany politician Jim Tedisco is merely resorting to more false attacks that have been discredited by the press because he wants to change the subject from his saying ‘No’ to saving or creating 76,000 jobs in Upstate New York and ‘No’ to the largest tax cut in history.”
Rudominer is referring here to Tedisco’s opposition to the stimulus bill — the same piece of legislation that Tedisco has used to allege that Murphy supported the AIG bonuses. So the attack does cut both ways.
