Cheryl Baswell Guthrie getting desperate?
Posted by BrianIt was bound to happen - the mud is flying in the AL-05 race. I heard the first attack ad of the brief race today on the radio with Cheryl Baswell Guthrie going after Wayne Parker. I hear she is also running a television variant. Maybe her internal polling is telling her that her nearly half million dollar “investment” in her primary run is not looking too good.
I’m waiting to get a transcript (Guthrie only puts her happy ads on her website), but she basically says that Parker has not been a leader in the Huntsville community and takes dig at him for his stint as a lobbyist.
While lobbyist is a four letter word to many people I think she is barking up the wrong tree with Parker. According to his campaign he lobbied for three entities:
- American Family Business Institute. Issue: repealing the death tax.
- Center for Cancer Care, PC. Issue: helping restore a local doctors PMD (Preferred Medical Doctor) status so he would be able to continue treating patients who could only go to a doctor with this designation. Basically protecting the patients ability to choose their own doctor.
- McAbee Construciton Inc. Issue: ESOP - Employee Stock Ownership Program. Helping get this set up for this company.
Eliminating the death tax. Increased health care choice. Employee ownership. I would argue that very few Republican voters would find any of those efforts objectionable.
Update: It’s actually worse than I first suspected. Guthrie flat out lied in her ad, claiming that Parker “didn’t tell us he spent years as a lobbyist in Washington D.C. It’s true.” Well, no it isn’t true. In the televised candidate forum, which was aired long before this ad was released, Parker said he was a lobbyist and mentioned some of the things he lobbied for. It does bear mentioning that although Parker says he spent time in D.C. (before his 1994 race) in his campaign bio he does not refer to his lobbying work. But, he did tell the public about it personally in the WHNT forum.
She also claims that Parker “worked to divert funds from North Alabama businesses to his lobbying clients elsewhere, and that cost us jobs.” Based on the clients and issues he lobbied for I would like to see Guthrie back up her claim that Parker’s work cost jobs in North Alabama. McAbee Construction is a Tuscaloosa based company, but I fail to see how helping them set up an ESOP cost any North Alabama jobs.
Related content:
May 30th, 2008 at 8:58 am
MIghty Christian of her.
May 30th, 2008 at 9:45 am
I’m very disappointed in Cheryl. She broke Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment: “Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican”.
May 30th, 2008 at 9:57 am
I didn’t think that rule applied during primaries.
Negative ads are ok - and very effective - when they’re true. Guthrie seems to be making things up as she goes along.
May 30th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Primaries are why the 11th Commandment was originally, um, commandmented.
http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0402/0402eleventhcommandment.htm
I think ‘negative’ ads are OK too, but I think that ‘making things up’ is ’speaking ill’.
If Cheryl had left it at pointing out Wayne’s lobbyist days - that’s OK, but calling him ‘dishonest’ is not, especially if she was dishonest in her ad - that’s far beyond the pale.
I think she hurt herself badly, and she may have even hurt Wayne a little if he’s in the General Election (as is probable).
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:22 am
[...] this point. Ignoring for now the specific timeline of when Parker was actively lobbying in D.C., as I argued earlier, very few Republicans would even object to the things that Parker was lobbying [...]