DEL.ICIO.USObama TV ad to highlight McCain’s link to Ralph Reed
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Barack Obama will lash out at John McCain’s connection to Ralph Reed on Thursday with a television ad in Atlanta that launches a new phase of the Georgia campaign.
The ad comes amid a burst of negative spots Obama is running in other states to hone a narrative that McCain is out of touch and to deflect criticism that he has been too soft on McCain.
GREGORY SMITH/AP
Ralph Reed says the Obama campaign is ‘resorting to the politics of personal destruction.’
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The new ad, which is one of a half dozen Obama has run in Georgia, also indicates Obama believes that the state, which hasn’t gone for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1992, is in play.
McCain has yet to buy ads in the Georgia market but has peppered Obama with negative ads in national buys, most notably one that likens Obama to celebrities Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.
In the ad airing Thursday, Obama calls Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition, a “Republican power broker” who was “in the middle” of the Jack Abramoff scandal.
“But when the Senate investigated, the senator in charge never even called Reed to testify,” the ad says. “That senator? John McCain. And who’s now raising money for McCain’s campaign? Ralph Reed.”
Reed told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he was never implicated, charged or called to testify in the Abramoff affair.
“I cooperated fully and completely with the Senate Indian Affairs Committee’s investigation and was never accused of doing anything improper,” Reed said. “It is just sad that the Obama campaign, which once pledged to run on hope and change, is now resorting to the politics of personal destruction and fear and smear as Obama drops in polls.”
Reed also said it takes “a lot of chutzpah for someone who did real estate deals with Tony Rezko to attack others.”
Rezko is a Chicago developer who was convicted in June of fraud, money-laundering and bribery. He raised money for Obama, and the two were involved in a land deal. Obama was never implicated in Rezko’s crimes.
Reed was paid millions of dollars by Abramoff as a subcontractor to help rally evangelical voters against a casino that would compete with one operated by Abramoff’s Indian tribe client.
While Reed never faced criminal charges, the scandal sank Reed’s bid for the Georgia Republican nomination as lieutenant governor.
The charge that Reed is raising money for McCain stems from an e-mail Reed sent to friends and associates urging them to contribute to a McCain fund-raiser held Monday in Atlanta.
In the e-mail, Reed says he has joined “McCain Victory 2008” and instructs recipients to send contributions to Reed. Reed previously told the AJC that he “merely sent out an e-mail with pro forma language used by anyone asking others to support Senator McCain.”
Reed told The Hill, a Washington newspaper that covers Congress, that Jamie Reynolds, McCain’s Georgia finance chairman, asked him to send the e-mail. Reynolds has not returned three telephone messages from the AJC asking for comment.
Reed has said he has no official role in the McCain campaign and that he is not seeking one. McCain seconded that Monday.
“The campaign has nothing to do with Ralph Reed,” McCain told WXIA in an interview prior to Monday’s fund-raiser, which Reed did not attend. “I understand he sent out an e-mail on his own, which I guess is your right as a citizen.”
Asked if anyone asked Reed to send the message, McCain said no.
“I neither seek nor want his support,” McCain said.
Obama’s new ad is “ridiculous,” McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said Wednesday. “Because of John McCain, corruption was exposed and people like Jack Abramoff went to jail.”
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