Election ad war gains momentum

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Just as Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry released two campaign ads yesterday intended to help voters become familiar with him, President Bush’s campaign premiered a commercial calling the Massachusetts senator more liberal than Democratic Senators Edward M. Kennedy and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Mr. Kerry says in one of his new ads: “My priorities are jobs and health care. My commitment is to defend this country.” In the other, the presumptive nominee says he would “reach out to the international community in sharing the burden” in Iraq.

The 30-second ads started running in media markets in 17 battleground states yesterday. They are the first in a series meant to flesh out Mr. Kerry’s proposals and biography as well as counter impressions created by Mr. Bush’s negative ads.

Mr. Kerry’s campaign was increasing advertising spending significantly for the new commercials, which the campaign considered the official start of its general election ads, even though Mr. Kerry has been running modest levels of ads, mainly criticizing Mr. Bush, since early March.

One Kerry adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the Democratic candidate’s spending now is even with Mr. Bush’s current $4 million-or-more buy.

By and large, voters are still learning about Mr. Kerry. And, much of what they know about him comes from Mr. Bush’s commercials that portray the four-term Massachusetts senator as a flip-flopper, a serial tax raiser and a soft-on-terrorism lawmaker.

The Bush campaign continues its effort to define Mr. Kerry with its new commercial that contends “Kerry’s problem is not that people don’t know him. It’s that people do.”

The 60-second ad, to air on national cable networks starting Thursday, quotes several newspaper editorials that say Mr. Kerry engages in doublespeak and waffles on positions. And, the ad says, “The nonpartisan National Journal magazine ranks Kerry the most liberal member of the Senate” — more than Democrats Mrs. Clinton of New York or Mr. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

Kerry spokesman Chad Clanton called Mr. Bush’s ad bogus. He said newspapers nationwide also have said that Mr. Bush is trying to mislead the public with his ad campaign.

Steve Schmidt, a Bush campaign spokesman, said the ad simply lays out “Kerry’s positions as described by America’s leading newspapers.”

Mr. Bush’s current ads are negative, including one running in media markets in 18 states that assails Mr. Kerry on military issues, while Mr. Kerry’s commercials are positive. But the Democrat continues to criticize the president while on the campaign trail. And, Mr. Kerry has run more than a dozen attack ads against Mr. Bush since the fall, primarily in states that held early Democratic primary contests.

Kerry strategist Tad Devine said the campaign is running positive ads now because voters want to hear an optimistic plan for fixing America’s ills — not “wholly negative and misleading attacks” such as the Bush commercials.

“What we believe is what voters want are answers, not insults,” Mr. Devine said.

Still, there is little need for Mr. Kerry to run anti-Bush ads. Democratic-leaning interest groups that the Kerry campaign can’t legally coordinate with, such as the Media Fund and the AFL-CIO, are doing it for him.