This item from the Washington Examiner on Tim Kaine and the outrageous ad from the Workers’ Voice super PAC is rather amazing. Kaine says George Allen has only himself to blame for the ad:
Workers’ Voice, a super PAC backed by big labor, put out four racially charged web ads last week. One says Allen “hung a Confederate flag in his living room,” while another resurrects “macaca,” a derogatory term Allen when mocking a Democratic staffer who was videotaping a 2006 Allen campaign rally.
Kaine, who’s facing more than $10 million in attack ads from outside Republican groups, said Monday that he has not seen the union’s ads but that Allen could have avoided such attacks.
“I think the whole system we have that allows third-party ads should be changed, and I challenged George Allen in our first debate in December, ‘Lets do a campaign that’s just Kaine versus Allen and no super PACs, no third parties,'” Kaine said. “And he turned me down.”
That Kaine doesn’t refute the ad’s content is bad enough. But he seems to be doing a few things here:
1. Blaming the victim, which is sweet of him.
2. Raising the possibility that his campaign is coordinating efforts with Workers’ Voice. Coordination, and under current campaign finance law, is very much illegal.
3. Opening himself to a whale of a controversy over his copywriters’ favorite hook, “secret money.”
The last point goes back to a letter Kaine sent Allen earlier this year in which Kaine suggested:
Let’s commit that any group running ads or conducting electoral activity for either of us should have to disclose their donors. Virginia voters are entitled to know who is funding this campaign.
It was a non-starter of a proposal, as even if the campaigns had agreed to the terms, the outside groups would have no obligation to comply.
Though it would be amusing to have the Workers’ Voice group disclose its donors — remember, it’s affiliated with the AFL-CIO, and its operating funds come from where? Union dues.
I’m sure some of those involuntary, individual dues-payers would marvel at finding their names listed on campaign finance documents as helping to pay for an ad with which they disagree or find offensive.
