Conservative PAC comes out swinging in round two

March 16, 2009 | Legislative Gazette

By T.J. Raphael

Today in Albany a conservative political action committee, Our Country Deserves Better, announced it will release a second series of television and radio advertisements in support of Republican congressional candidate and Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco.

Tedisco, R-Schenectady, is running to fill a vacancy in New York’s 20th Congressional District against Democratic candidate and Warren county businessman Scott Murphy. A special election for the district, which includes all or parts of  Columbia, Delaware, Dutchess, Essex, Greene, Otsego, Rensselaer, Saratoga, Warren and Washington counties, will be March 31. The House seat became vacant after Gov. David A. Paterson selected Kirsten Gillibrand to replace Hillary Clinton in the U.S. Senate after President Obama appointed her as secretary of state.

Last week the PAC fired its first round of television ads on four major Albany network affiliates including ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX. This week the size of the TV ad buy will expand, and a radio advertising campaign will be broadcast on news/talk, country and adult contemporary stations, according to a prepared statement issued by the group.

The newest advertisements from the group attack Murphy on taxes, his voting record and what the PAC sees as his lack of support of the military. In one advertisement, an ominous voice asserts, “We can’t trust Democratic congressional candidate Scott Murphy on taxes.”

The group’s campaign coordinator and Washington County resident, Kelly S. Eustis, said in prepared statement, “There’s a reason the National Tax Limitation Committee PAC endorsed Jim Tedisco and not Scott Murphy. Taxpayer groups know they can trust Tedisco. Scott Murphy’s record on tax issues amounts to his trying to argue that he wasn’t responsible for paying taxes on the corporation he founded because he sold the company before the IRS got on his case.”

Another advertisement from the group claims Murphy doesn’t back the military because during college he opposed having the ROTC on his campus.

“I saw first-hand that taxpayers could trust Jim Tedisco, because he constantly fought for them. Scott Murphy hasn’t done a darn thing for the people of the district other than not pay his taxes and badmouth the military,” Mark Williams, the group’s co-vice chairman, said in a prepared statement.

All of the advertisements can be seen and heard at the group’s Web site, www.ourcountrypac.org.

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