The McAuliffe campaign just sent out the following statement in reaction to the Deeds' camapaign's "negative attack ad" which falsely claims that Terry McAuliffe somehow "attacked" Mark Warner and Tim Kaine on the payday lending issue. As the Deeds campaign well knows, Terry McAuliffe was talking about the General Assembly's passage in 2002 of a bill
allowing payday lending in Virginia, as well as the length of time it took the
General Assembly to crack down on the payday lenders' predatory practices. The Deeds ad is particularly absurd - and disappointing, frankly - given that, as the McAuliffe statement points out, "all three of Terry's opponents allowed predatory lending to explode in Virginia and took thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the industry." With that, here's the McAuliffe campaign's statement.
Statement from the McAuliffe Campaign on Creigh Deeds's Negative Attack Ad
In response to the release of Creigh Deeds's negative attack ad yesterday, McAuliffe campaign spokeswoman Elisabeth Smith released the following statement:
"It's strange that Creigh Deeds is attacking Terry on this issue. The fact is that as members of the General Assembly all three of Terry's opponents allowed predatory lending to explode in Virginia and took thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the industry.
"It's an honest difference between the candidates. Terry wants to ban all predatory loans, and he's the only candidate who has pledged not to accept money from predatory lenders. He has also proposed a plan to replace predatory loans with a responsible alternative."
A fact check of Deeds' ad follows.
Please see the comments section for the fact check (it's excellent, I urge you to read it all!). And once again, I just want to express my disappointment in the Deeds campaign. To date, they have been running a generally positive campaign focused on Creigh Deeds' vision for the future of Virginia. This ad, unfortunately, changes that, as it is a completely false and negative attack on Terry McAuliffe. I also find it sad that, in these tough economic times, the Deeds campaign chose to fire several hard-working members of its field staff specifically in order to save enough money in order to run a false, negative radio attack ad against a fellow Democrat. I sincerely hope that in the closing weeks of the campaign, the Deeds campaign will return to a positive message and vision for Virginia's future, not attack politics as evidenced by this ad.
