Dems Unite Around GOP Smear Campaigns

I’m glad the Rhode Island Democratic party is finally coming together to renounce the incredibly negative campaigning the Republicans have been resorting to. Let’s hope the media picks up on this story.

In my biased opinion, it’s the biggest meta-narrative of the local campaign this year, but I think it has a lot of merit for my brothers and sisters in the unbiased side of the industry as well.

Today at 1pm at Slater Mill all the Democratic heavyweights in the state – Sheldon, Jack Reed, Cicilline, Elizabeth Roberts, Gina Raimondo, Mayor Taveras and Ed Pacheco, among others (Langevin will be taping the WJAR debate) to call upon their Republican counterparts to stop slinging mud and start talking about issues.

It seems like every day either Brendan Doherty, Barry Hinckley or their operatives release a new dirty and misleading advertisement. Hinckley was just given a Pants on Fire by Politifact today for an untrue ad. Doherty’s ads make a pants on fire rating seem like a gold star though. They have literally been among the most atrocious I’ve ever seen. AP writer Michelle Smith does a nice job of summing up the ad here. She writes:

House Republicans are airing a TV ad in Rhode Island linking freshman Democratic Rep. David Cicilline to a child molester and a murderer he defended when he was a lawyer two decades ago.

A Doherty spokesman told Ian Donnis of RIPR earlier in the week that the campaign decided to go negative because Cicilline did first. Tim White chided Doherty when he offered this same flawed logic during a WPRI debate, saying, “you’re basically saying he started it.”

I think it’s laughable that Brendan Doherty calls himself a man of uncommon integrity and then runs this kind of dirty campaign. There’s no reason unbiased political reporters shouldn’t be calling out a candidate for such an obvious contradiction.

This kind of gutter campaigning isn’t good for anybody and Republicans should be held accountable for resorting to such dirty tactics. But, I suppose if they had a message that would resonate with Rhode Islanders, they’d be ringing that bell instead.