Message from Ed Fallon

By Ed Fallon

Dear Friend,

If you’re a fan of negative advertising and big-money politics, it’s been a great week for you. Fortunately, most of us find negative advertising to be dishonest and irritating. At the current pace, this could be a long, disheartening election season.

Yesterday, I heard from a reliable source that Newt Gingrich’s PAC, the Republican Leadership Council (not to be confused with Christopher Rants’ Iowa Leadership Council), is spending $500,000 on negative direct mail against incumbent Democrats in the Iowa House. At the same time, the Economic Freedom Fund, funded by the same donor who ran the Swift Boat attacks against John Kerry, has targeted Chet Culver and Leonard Boswell. They’re financing push polls and negative TV ads across the state. The current political climate often means that 527 groups and political action committees can be brought in to do the dirty work for a candidate, without the candidate appearing to be accountable.

The third district congressional race is especially discouraging. Jeff Lamberti’s disingenuous ad about Leonard Boswell’s determination to raise your taxes is being countered by a Boswell ad on immigration and criminal justice. The Boswell ad (entitled “Keeping Iowa Secure” and viewable on his website) is so offensive that it runs the risk of alienating a significant portion of Boswell’s Democratic base. It’s unfortunate that this race has deteriorated to name calling, record-distorting and fear mongering at a time when the nation faces a war, a health care crisis and skyrocketing tuition costs, among other problems.

One encouraging piece of news came out of southern Iowa this week, where Republican legislative candidate Kevin Wiskus changed his affiliation to “no party” in response to a negative mail piece the Republican Party ran on his behalf. His opponent is Democrat Kurt Swaim, who is a hard-working legislator with a reputation for being fair and non-partisan. Congratulations are due to both of them for working to keep their race positive and issue-oriented. Races like theirs promote real public discourse, instead of the bitter, divisive, negative elections we’ve become accustomed to.

Thanks for reading,

Ed

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