Fight for Virginians' votes spills over onto the airwaves

Here's another sign that Virginia is a key battleground in the 2008 presidential campaign: The state's television viewers have front-row seats for what's shaping up to be this year's "swift boat" ad controversy.

"Swift-boating" became a verb in the national political lexicon in 2004 when a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ran a disputed TV ad campaign attacking Sen. John Kerry's war record as a swift-boat commander during the Vietnam War. The ads were widely perceived to be a factor in the Democratic presidential nominee's defeat.

Now a new group called the American Issues Project is airing a TV ad linking this year's Democratic candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, to William Ayers, a member of the 1960s radical group Weather Underground that carried out bombings of public buildings, including the U.S. Capitol.

The group is running the Ayers ad in several states, including Virginia. It spent $160,000 airing it in the Hampton Roads market last week as the Democratic National Convention was being held in Denver, according to records kept by local television stations.

Meanwhile, the campaign of Republican candidate Sen. John McCain placed orders late last week for TV spots to run during the GOP convention in Minnesota this week, pushing total spending on presidential campaign-related spots in the local market past $1 million.

That volume of advertising before Labor Day, the traditional campaign kickoff time, is unprecedented, said Cindi Dove, general sales manager at local CBS affiliate WTKR.

"Normally we haven't seen this kind of activity in a presidential election this early," Dove said. "In past years, we probably wouldn't have seen anything until late September or October."

The sole funder of the $2.9 million American Issues Project ad campaign is Texas billionaire Harold Simmons, who was a principal backer of the swift-boat campaign in 2004. Simmons also is a fundraiser for McCain. One of the two board members of the American Issues Project, Ed Failor Jr., is a former paid consultant for the McCain campaign.

The ad opens with a reference to one of the planes involved in the 2001 terrorist attacks and, in the next sentence, segues into the Ayers case. "United 93 never hit the Capitol on 9/11," the narrator says. "But the Capitol was bombed 30 years before by an American terrorist group called Weather Underground."

At the end of the spot, the narrator asks, "Why would Barack Obama be friends with someone who bombed the Capitol?"

No one was hurt in the Capitol bombing. Ayers was never prosecuted for that or any of the other Weather Underground bombings. Charges against him were dropped because of prosecutorial misconduct.

Now a college professor in Chicago, Ayers held a meet-the-candidate event for Obama at his home when Obama first ran for state office in the mid-1990s. He and Obama have served together on the boards of two Chicago nonprofit groups.

In 2004, some analysts said Kerry didn't respond forcefully enough to the swift-boat attack ad. The Obama campaign, in contrast, has come back swinging, producing an immediate response ad that also has been airing in Hampton Roads.

That ad opens with a picture of a foreclosure sign in front of a house. "With all our problems," the narrator says, "why is John McCain talking about the '60s, trying to link Barack Obama to radical Bill Ayers? McCain knows Obama denounced Ayers' crimes, committed when Obama was just 8 years old."

Obama's lawyers also have launched a legal challenge, alleging that the Ayers ad violates federal law. The American Issues Project is organized as a nonprofit "social welfare" group that is not allowed to engage in political activity as its primary purpose.

The group's spokesman did not return phone calls.

Gail Gitcho, a McCain spokeswoman, declined to comment on the Ayers ad except to say, "We had nothing to do with it."

The Obama campaign has spent $670,000 on TV ads in Hampton Roads since the end of the primary season.

In addition to the Ayers response ad, the Obama camp is airing a spot lampooning McCain's failure in a recent interview to remember how many homes he owns. "Call it country club economics," the announcer says over a video image of McCain riding in a golf cart with former President George H.W. Bush.

Pilot writer Julian Walker contributed to this report.

Bill Sizemore, (757) 446-2276, bill.sizemore@pilotonline.com