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Thursday, July 13, 2006
The real mud flies on Wednesday
Hecht gets nasty with last-minute mailings
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
While everyone’s been watching the mud fly in the Republican lieutenant governor’s race, what had seemed a relatively civil Democratic lieutenant governor’s race has erupted this week into a pretty nasty affair with two mail pieces from Greg Hecht’s campaign that are right up there with the other team in terms of negativity.
Over a photo of a wan-looking girl on the first piece, a blotter-type headline says “72 children died when Jim Martin was the head of Georgia’s DFCS… why should we trust Jim to be protecting our kids now?â€?
Billy Horton, Hecht’s campaign manager, acknowledged the piece was “a more visible escalation,� but said the race already was becoming more negative, and in any case, the piece was “tame� compared to what Martin might expect from either of the Republicans.
“It’s just been his chipping away at us for the last three, four, five weeks, and saying one thing after another, that brought us to the point where we felt like we had to respond,� Horton said.
He cited what he said was Martin’s misrepresentation of one of Hecht’s Senate votes on a SPLOST issue, and his “outright, blatant misrepresentation� of Hecht’s record on abortion issues.
“If that’s what they’re calling an attack, judge that in comparison to this mail piece,� said Will Martin, Jim Martin’s communications director. “Jim’s position is that every child’s life is precious. For Greg’s campaign to attempt to score points over their deaths is outrageous.�
The timing is critical here. The DFCS piece was mailed at the beginning of the week, timed to drop in mailboxes less than a week before the primary. But Horton didn’t mention, and Martin didn’t know about until late Thursday afternoon, a second piece that went out Wednesday – the last day the post office guarantees a political mailer will be delivered before next Tuesday.
It screams even louder.
“2000 women are raped in Georgia every year. Jim Martin said some of these women ‘should have known better’,� a headline says, over a color negative of a frightened woman with a hand over her mouth. Quoting Martin from an AJC story, it says “She was in a bar, should have known better, wore a short skirt.�
This has to do with a 1994 bill sponsored by Martin when he was in the House which failed to win passage. It would have created different categories for the crime of rape, and was favored by many prosecutors and rape counseling groups.
As for the quote, we’ll give you the full version from the AJC and let you judge for yourself. Martin is talking about how the Georgia law made it hard to prosecute rape cases:
“If there are any factors – such as, she was in a bar, should have known better, wore a short dress – some juries are unwilling to prosecute the crime as rape. The hope is we will get more convictions.�
An outside group weighs in
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Washington-based group Campaign Money Watch on Friday jumps into Georgia’s Republican race for lieutenant governor, with a 30-second TV ad attacking Ralph Reed.
The ad employs the same topics used by Reed’s GOP rival, Casey Cagle, charging that Reed worked on behalf of casinos, and helped defend an economic system on the Northern Marianas Islands that fostered prostitution and forced abortions.
David Donnelly, director of Campaign Money Watch, said that — despite the resemblance of his group’s ads to those run by Cagle — there was no contact with the campaign of Reed’s rival.
Donnelly wouldn’t tell us the size of the buy, but would only say that the ad will run Friday and Monday on WSB-TV and WXIA-TV. That leads one to assume that it’s a fairly small one.
View the ad here.
This is the same group that set loose a radio ad against Reed last May, when Rudy Giuliani was in town. We can’t remember the specifics, but that ad wasn’t crafted in a way that Republican voters would buy into it.
This new one is, asking constantly, “Is that what we believe in?”
The sounds of Sunday’s GPTV debate
Snippets on Abramoff, eminent domain, and immigration from Reed and Cagle
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Click here for a listen to some of the best parts of the Atlanta Press Club/GPTV debate from Sunday, between Ralph Reed and Casey Cagle, the two Republican candidates for lieutenant governor.
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Rudy’s duty, a Cagle pdf, and Reed cries foul
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Truly, is this a great item or what? Where else can you get a triple click in one stop? We’re working on the latte that goes with it.
Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, did his part for Ralph Reed’s race to the finish for lieutenant governor last night. The ex-mayor left this message for moderate Republican voters, endorsing Reed on issues such as taxes, the federal budget, crime and immigration.
The line that matters: “I know leadership when I see it.”
Also, Peachpundit.com has done everyone a favor by obtaining a scanned version of the Casey Cagle flyer on the Northern Marianas issue. Think of this in coordination with the TV ad, and automated phone calls.
To answer Cagle, Reed’s campaign has sent us this phone message from the candidate himself. The line that matters: “To suggest that I, the former head of the Christian Coalition, favor abortion and prostitution is a low blow in a Republican primary.”
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