Texan's donation buys last-minute anti-Tester ads
2006-11-02
Source: Billings Gazette
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rss feedIn an example of how heated and high-dollar Montana's race for U.S. Senate has become, consider this:
In three days beginning last Friday, a Virginia group calling itself Americans for Honesty on Issues, took a $1 million donation from a single Texas donor and spent $369,778 of it to produce and run one television ad in Montana against Democratic candidate Jon Tester.
The ad is hardly the first time an outside group has spent money on Montana's watched Senate race, pitting incumbent Republican Sen. Conrad Burns against Tester. National Democrats have been running ads critical of Burns for months. The state Democratic Party paid for a few ads against Burns beginning last year.
But for weeks, few independent groups were weighing in on behalf of Burns, who had been passed over for big-dollar TV advertising by national Republicans. That changed this week, when the National Republican Senatorial Committee bought $310,000 worth of ads on behalf of Burns. That amount would allow the committee to run one ad enough times for every Montanan to see it between 15 and 18 times before next Tuesday's election.
Little is known about the group that is running the latest ads. Americans for Honesty on Issues says on its Web site only that it is "organized to engage in political issue communications in compliance with federal and state laws."
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