The Republican Party in Alabama sent out a mailer last week that portrays President Barack Obama as mobster pulling the strings of a state Supreme Court candidate.
The ad warned voters of “Chicago Politics in Alabama” and was designed in the style of the movie poster from “The Godfather.” A TPM reader sent in a photograph of the mailer.
“Don’t let Obama pull strings to get Bob Vance elected chief justice of Alabama’s Supreme Court,” the ad said.
T.J. Maloney, executive director of the Alabama Republican Party, confirmed to TPM that his organization paid for the mailers but declined to say how many were sent out or which voters were targeted.
Vance is running against Roy Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who was removed from office in 2003 after disobeying a federal court order demanding the removal of a monument to the Ten Commandments from the state judicial building. Since he was thrown out of office, Moore has unsuccessfully run for Alabama governor twice and served as president of an organization which defends religious liberty.
A trial judge in Jefferson County for more than 10 years, Vance told TPM that Republicans in Alabama “try to tie any candidate to President Obama” because but that Obama “doesn’t have a clue” who he is. Obama did, however, appoint his wife, Joyce White Vance, as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama.
“Never even met him, never even talked to him,” Bob Vance said, adding that he would rather focus on the fiscal needs of the Alabama judicial system rather than the “divisive wedge issues” his opponent is focusing on. “I think voters are a lot smarter than my opponent gives them credit for.”
Moore’s campaign did not respond to TPM’s interview requests.
