Campaign ads highlighting negatives of incumbent House Rep. Mike Stone (R-Lee, Harnett, friend of the Rant) and his Democratic challenger Brad Salmon have been landing in mailboxes and on TVs in recent weeks, and very little of it appears to have been paid for by the respective campaigns.
Stone complained in a recent fundraising letter that “left-wing radicals” had “cross(ed) the line of decency” with negative ads about fracking, taking money from an indicted gambling executive, and other parts of his record. Those ads have been primarily funded by various PACs and interest groups.
But for the past two weeks, outside spending on Stone’s side has also taken place, with Stone’s overseers at the North Carolina Republican Party now dropping mailers on voters which criticize Salmon’s 2012 questioning of why an octogenarian would want to enter politics, the natural gas industry propping up his fracking votes with a radio campaign, and Americans for Prosperity touting something about purses in another set of radio ads.
Now, the state GOP is criticizing Salmon for saying something nice about disgraced former N.C. House Rep. Deb McManus at a Democratic Party event months before anybody knew she was in trouble.
While the facts in the Stone ads are well-documented, any Salmon-McManus connection is tenuous at best, since politicians tend to say nice things about other politicians who share their party.
Additionally, the latest mailed claims the McManus is Salmon’s “favorite Democrat” on one side, while noting that Salmon is “Obama’s biggest fan” on the other.
While picking your favorite Democrat isn’t quite as easy as picking your favorite Beatle (or One Direction member, OMG) the statements seem a mite contradictory (not to mention reaching).
In any case, ProgressNC, a left-leaning group, is out with a new website again hitting Stone on his failure to divest himself of $4,000 in campaign contributions from an indicted video poker mogul.
The site mentions a petition asking Stone to donate the proceeds to one of up to 11 education projects in need of funds in Lee and Harnett counties. From the site:
There’s a new site called Donors Choose that allows individual teachers to request funding for specific classroom projects. Usually it’s a set of new books or materials that enhance the learning experience for their students.
Right now in Lee and Harnett Counties – the same ones Stone claims to represent – there are 11 projects that local teachers have submitted, which need a total of $6,863 in additional funding. With his $4,000 in gambling money, Stone could completely pay for 8 of these projects and make a real impact on the lives of students.
Sign our petition urging Mike Stone to donate his gambling money directly to local teachers who are trying to improve their classrooms.
It not even being October yet, it’s clear this is one of the top races in the area and has drawn a lot of attention from within the district and without. The Rant guesses we’ll being seeing a lot more of this before Election Day is here.
Vote Salmon in November!!!