Published: September 30, 2008 11:12 pm         

After 12 years, GOP ads return to Indiana

Dems go on defense after McCain ‘attack’ ad hits TV

TERRE HAUTE — Democrat officials canvassed Indiana on Tuesday on the heels of the first television ad for Republican John McCain, the first time a Republican presidential candidate has run a TV ad in the Hoosier state since 1996.

The ad is paid for by the Republican National Committee.

The add starts with a photo of a Wall Street sign. That sign then melts, saying Wall Street squanders and Washington is forced to bail out with “you guessed it. Our money.”

“Can it get any worse? Under Barack Obama’s plan, the government would spend a trillion dollars more, even after the bailout. A trillion dollars. Who pays? — you pay,” the ad states.

“New taxes. New spending. New Debt. Barack Obama’s plan: It’ll make the problem worse,” the ad states.

Dan Parker, chairman of the Indiana Democratic Party, stopped in Terre Haute, saying that Republicans for months disregarded Obama, now the “Republican National Party is spending upwards of $800,000 in Indiana to run a desperate attack against Barack Obama,” he said.

“This boils down to John McCain and the national Republican Party waking up to the fact that not only is our economy not fundamentally strong, but the [presidential] race here in Indiana is truly close and we are a battleground state,” Parker said.

He quoted from a Time magazine article on Sept. 20, in which Kevin Ober, Indiana Republican Party’s executive director, said, “We want the [GOP] to put resources in true battleground states. The polls are already showing us ahead.”

“Why are we now a battleground state? The fact is the race here for president is all about the economy and jobs,” Parker said. “People in Indiana are sick and tired of seeing their jobs outsourced to countries like China. We have lost 109,000 manufacturing jobs under the Bush-McCain economy. We have lost 35,000 jobs to NAFTA (North American Free Trade Act) and 45,000 to China,” Parker said.

“People in Indiana have seen incomes drop over $4,000 since George Bush has been president and Indiana’s unemployment rate is at its highest level since 1987 — 6.4 percent unemployment,” he said.

“This is a desperate attack, the same old politics and same old message that has got us in this economic mess in the first place,” Parker said.

Ober said Tuesday it is Obama who is on the attack.

“At last count, there are six negative ads from the Barack Obama for president campaign that have been running in Indiana. For those six very negative ads to continue to run in a vacuum, we certainly don’t want to risk what kind of consequences might come from that,” Ober said.

“We welcome the decision the Republican National Committee made to invest in TV here based solely on the fact that now is an appropriate time as any to respond to the persistent negativity of the Obama campaign,” Ober said.

“Obama has run probably the most expensive presidential campaign in the history of the state of Indiana and his numbers have gone absolutely nowhere. And he has done so in a persistently negative way that manifests itself in name-calling. Any problem that comes up, they have a negative ad around that problem and then call John McCain names,” Ober said.

Ober conceded that the presidential race in Indiana is close.

“I think we all recognize that this race is competitive in a way that it hasn’t been the last two times for sure, and maybe back to 1996 when it was a single-digit race, although you had [Independent candidate] Ross Perot at the time and it was a little bit different dynamic,” he said.

“This to me, this [TV ad] complements an already strong grassroots campaign on behalf of John McCain that the Republican Party has been working on for months. A lot of campaigns ramp up beginning the first of October,” Ober said.

Other Indiana cities where Democrats canvassed Tuesday include Evansville, Fort Wayne, Lafayette, South Bend and Indianapolis by former state party chairmen Ann Delaney, Kip Tew and former Indiana Secretary of State Joseph Hogsett as well as Evansville Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel.

Howard Greninger can be reached at (812) 231-4204 or howard.greninger@tribstar.com.