Ads assailing Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama on taxes and abortion are coming out in key states and on national cable networks — aired by independent groups largely financed by two wealthy donors.
The abortion ad, a $350,000 spot that will appear during the next week in Ohio and New Mexico, aims to cast Obama as out of the mainstream, even among abortion rights advocates. Aired by BornAliveTruth.org, it singles out his efforts while in the Illinois Senate to defeat the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. Obama and abortion rights forces in Illinois have said the bill would have undermined the landmark Supreme Court case on abortion, Roe v. Wade.
The tax ad is the work of North Carolina-based RightChange.com, which plans to spend about $1.5 million in the next two weeks on national cable networks including Fox News Channel, CNN and CNN Headline News, said spokesman Tim Pittman.
The new ads are part of a sudden surge in advertising by outside groups that is rapidly filling airwaves as the presidential contest enters its final seven weeks.
Two Democratic-leaning political action committees aired an anti-McCain ad on CNN and MSNBC that features a former fellow prisoner of war criticizing Republican presidential nominee John McCain's temperament. The Service Employees International Union on Sunday began spending $2 million in six battleground states depicting McCain as out of touch on economic issues.
The ad questioning McCain's temperament is partly financed by Democracy for America, a political action committee headed by James Dean and founded by his brother, Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Howard Dean is no longer affiliated with the group. The ad is only scheduled to run for three days and cost about $50,000, according to spokesman Daniel I. Medress.
BornAliveTruth.org is organized as a nonprofit entity commonly known as a 527 for the section of the tax code that regulates such groups. Unlike political action groups, these organizations can raise money from individuals in unlimited amounts. The main donor of BornAliveTruth is Raymond Ruddy, a prominent anti-abortion figure in Massachusetts who supported Mitt Romney for president in the GOP primary.
The ad features Gianna Jessen, a 31-year-old motivational speaker from Nashville, Tenn., adopted as a child after a failed abortion. Sen. Obama, please support born alive infant protections . I'm living proof these babies have a right to live.
As a state senator, Obama opposed three legislative efforts, in 2001, 2002 and 2003, to give legal protections to any aborted fetus that showed signs of life. The 2003 measure was virtually identical to a bill President Bush signed into law in 2002.
While Obama has said he would have supported the federal law, he and other opponents of the Illinois bill have said it would have had greater consequences on state laws governing abortion. The Obama campaign also has pointed out that Illinois already had legislation protecting aborted fetuses that were born alive and were considered able to survive.
Jill Stanek, an organizer of BornAliveTruth, said the Illinois legislation would protect pre-viable fetuses as well. He took a leadership role in seeing that this bill did not see the light of day, she said.
Stanek's stances on social issues have also put her at odds with McCain. She and the Republican presidential nominee, for instance, differ on embryonic stem cell research. McCain supports it as a possible key to treating diseases; she opposes it because it destroys human embryos. In a 2004 column on the Internet publication World Net Daily, Stanek compared actor Michael J. Fox's support for such research to high-tech cannibalism. Fox has Parkinson's disease.
Rightchange.com, the 527 group sponsoring the tax ad, is financed largely by North Carolina pharmaceutical executive Fred Eshelman, Pittman said. Eshelman has contributed more than $200,000 to Republican candidates and party organizations since 2002, according to Federal Election Commission records.
In the ad, a man with a bullhorn atop a high bridge complains of change that mostly amounts to higher taxes. He tumbles from the bridge as people gasp, but a bungee cord saves him. Change: Before you fall for it, get the facts, the man says.
The group's criticisms of Obama's proposals are based largely on a July 29 Wall Street Journal op-ed piece by Michael Boskin, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush. The column included some faulty assumptions about Obama's proposals. For example, it said Obama might place a new tax of up to 12.4 percent on earnings now exempt from the Social Security payroll tax. Obama has said his new tax would not exceed 4 percent, and it would apply only to annual incomes above $250,000.
Currently, all income above $102,000 is exempt from Social Security taxes.
Senator Obama will provide a tax cut to 95 percent of American families, while John McCain will give no tax relief to more than 100 million middle-class families, Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor said.
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Associated Press writer Charles Babington contributed to this report.
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On the Net:
http://www.bornalivetruth.org/
http://www.rightchange.com/
http://www.democracyforamerica.com/
