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Just this past week, AJS attacked Republican legislator Fran Wendleboe, who is running in a contested primary for state senate. Before that, AJS attacked Republican senate candidate Kelly Ayotte.
Of course, both Carney, a protege of NHGOP chair John H. Sununu, and Hynes, late of Faux!Hampshire, engaged in the Sargeant Schultz defense - I see nothing - I know nothing! over the Ayotte attacks, claiming they had nothing whatsoever to do with it. The denials caused some eyerolling, similar to the eyerolling that occurred when Mahoney resigned from the RNC in an alleged bout of high dudgeon.
Distaso's column today also provoked some eyerolling when he gave Hynes enough rope to look silly claiming he knew nothing about Mahoney's plans when Hynes was sniping at Ashooh on Faux!hamsphire:
Hynes said yesterday that when he was rapping congressional candidate Rich Ashooh a couple of months ago on the LLC tax issue, he did so "as a private citizen," not as an undercover future Mahoney consultant.
He said that while he has been a friend of Mahoney for a long time, he had "no idea" that Mahoney would run for Congress at the time he was criticizing Ashooh on the site.
Hynes said he was not "brought into the loop" about Mahoney's plans until a week ago.
Poor Patrick - it must be so embarrassing to be admit that you are so far out of the loop...
But I digress.
AJS and its attacks on Republican primary candidates go back years; in Texas, in 2000, for example, AJS spent $40,000 in a state school board election - the offending candidate had endorsed Steve Frobes, not George W. Bush, for president. Three years later, they spent $50,000 going after a state senate primary candidate who had sided with Democrats in the infamous Tom Delay Texas redistricting scheme.
AJS also has access to lots of money from donors that it refuses to identify. It spent about $1,000,000 against Jeanne Shaheen in 2002, and several hundreds of thousands of dollars more in 2008. It spent about $9,000,000 in the 2000 elections nationally. Benjamin Ginsberg, who was the attorney for Swift Boat, was legal counsel for AJS; Bob Perry, a Texas multi multi millionaire funded Swift Boats, and also funded a Texas referendum drive that Carney ran in the 1990's.
In addition to the availability of money to fund ads against Republican primary candidates, AJS has shown a willingness to distort the truth, or just make things up. As the Nashua Telegraph recently said,
AJS ads misrepresent the positions taken by the candidates they oppose. In the last election, Democratic Senatorial Candidate Jeanne Shaheen was the target of a costly TV and radio campaign that claimed as governor she supported an income tax, when in fact she was largely responsible for defeating the idea.
Just last month Republican Senators Lindsay Graham and Jim Demint slammed AJS, which is running ads against a Republican congressman who is intending to run for governor in South Carolina:
South Carolina's two U.S. senators said Thursday a Washington advocacy group's ads about U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett and the federal stimulus package are off base.
The Americans for Job Security ads say the nation is in "record debt and what do Washington politicians like Congressman Gresham Barrett do? They vote for big spending and bailouts which end up sinking us. Congressman Gresham Barrett. He's part of the problem. Some have called him a champion of President Obama's stimulus."
Republican U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint released statements that said the ads unfairly characterize Barrett as a champion of President Barack Obama's stimulus spending.
AJS plans to spend over $100,000 on this race.
Now, maybe Mahoney will surprise me and openly engage in attacks on his opponents, rather than hiding behind a third party advocacy group. But that would be at odds with the history of his team of consultants. In any event, I bet that the Mahoney campaign, or its friends, or both, will make this the nastiest of all N.H. primaries this cycle.
Sargeant Schultz:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
defintion of high dudgeon:
http://www.thefreedictionary.c...
link to granite status:
http://www.unionleader.com/art...
AJS and the $1,000,000 spent to defeat Jeanne Shaheen (and additional money spent agaisnt Paul Wellstone):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Telegraph on AJS's distorting ads:
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com...
Republican senators on AJS:
http://www.wcnc.com/news/polit...
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