Washington Post: N.H. Is Already Flooded With Attack Ads

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/03/AR2008010304340.html

Atmosphere More Charged Than in Iowa

By Matthew Mosk and John Solomon
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 4, 2008; Page A10

Computerized phone calls noting that Sen. John McCain hasn't signed a pledge not to raise taxes. Hundreds of thousands of glossy union mailers using an image of two Band-Aids to illustrate the flaws in Sen. Barack Obama's health-care plan. And personal calls to homes assailing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for disguising her abortion-rights record.

As the 2008 presidential candidates make their quick pivot into New Hampshire today, residents there are already being inundated with negative messages from campaigns and outside groups hoping to sway the primary's outcome. The atmosphere promises to be more intense than in Iowa, with highly charged rhetoric from labor unions and other outside political groups jamming mailboxes and phone lines.

Unions and outside groups have reported spending more than $4 million over the past two months, emboldened by a recent Supreme Court decision overturning a section of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance act meant to curtail union and corporate sponsorship of issue ads during the tense final weeks of a campaign.

Candidates are also becoming more combative. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who lost his lead in the Republican race in recent days to McCain (Ariz.) and is using his personal fortune to help finance his campaign, has organized telephone calls declaring that McCain "is against repealing the death tax," twice voted against President Bush's tax cuts and "repeatedly refused to sign a no-new-tax pledge."

"That is not the kind of leadership we want in the White House," the recorded calls state.

Under the tightly compressed campaign schedule, in which even the best-financed candidates are stretching to compete in dozens of contests before Feb. 5, the added messages from outside groups are intended to make a big difference.

FULL story at link.