Be wary of third-party political ads

 4 comment(s)  
 E-mail Story
 Print Story
  Share

 digg it!
 Facebook
 del.icio.us
Seed Newsvine
Fark It
Reddit

Text Size: 

Tools Sponsor

Where supposedly independent political groups proliferate, third-party advertising featuring cheap shots, innuendo, lies and mudslinging is likely to follow.

Nebraska voters should be alert. These groups are becoming more numerous and active in the state.

In previous years, the groups have been most prevalent at the national level. Both conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans have resorted to scurrilous third-party attack ads.

Last year the liberal group Moveon.org ran an advertisement that referred to Gen. David Petraeus as “Gen. Betray Us” the day that he was to testify before Congress.

The Swift Boat ads against former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry were so successful that the term “swiftboating” is now used to denote smear campaigns.

Political advertising paid directly by a candidate tends to be more issue-oriented and fact-based than ads by independent groups, possibly because of the legal requirement that a candidate state as part of the ad that he or she “approved this message.”

In Nebraska, independent political organizations this spring spent more than $118,000 for outside advertising and other work on behalf of candidates. The parties spent about $47,000 on this type of campaign activity.

The Nebraska ads that aired this spring were not as pernicious as, say, the famous Willie Horton ad that helped sink Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis in 1988, but they do deserve to be called negative advertising.

The campaign postcards sent out by the Nebraska Alliance for the Private Sector, set up by Omaha businessman Dave Nabity, portrayed legislative candidate Dave Newell as the friend of portly, stogie-sucking liberal lobbyists.

Most of the funding for Nabity’s group came from “Team Sam,” an obscure national group with a Chicago address.

That illustrates another unwelcome characteristic of third-party groups; they offer a conduit for outside money to influence unwary Nebraska voters. Special interest groups sometimes target sparsely populated and relatively poor states in the hopes they can get more bang for their buck, perhaps buying a vote in Congress or in a state legislature for bargain basement rates.

As political operatives will admit in candid moments, there’s a reason why groups and candidates use attack ads and negative advertising. They work.

They are most effective with voters who are uninformed and gullible.

That’s why it’s incumbent upon voters to take the time to separate the facts from the falsehoods. For better or worse, it’s going to take some effort. That’s what it takes to make democracy work.