Democrats seek to curb attack ads ( Dukakis and Kerry )

The state Democratic Party has created a four-member panel, headed by former governor Michael S. Dukakis, that will review campaign advertisements and publicly rebuke candidates who use negative attacks.

Party chairman Philip W. Johnston created the panel and will serve on it, along with Dukakis and Cameron F. Kerry, brother of US Senator John F. Kerry; and Katherine M. Clark of Melrose, a former state Senate candidate who is chairing a statewide campaign effort for the Democratic Party.

Johnston, elected party chairman in 2000, said he believes that a major reason many Democratic nominees for governor have failed to win in general elections is the barrage of negative ads that fill the airways and are mailed to voters during primaries.

``I believe the party has a real responsibility to do what it can to minimize the political damage to our nominees during the primary," Johnston said.

``This initiative can act as a deterrent to candidates and make their media consultants think twice before they produce harshly negative commercials attacking their opponents."

Kerry Murphy Healey, the lt gov, is running as the sole GOP candidate. Christy Mihos is running as an independent;
Reilly, Patrick, and Gabrieli as Dems. There's a chance
Healey and Mihos will split the anti-Dem-hack vote and a Dem
will wind up in the corner office again...

>>But in 1982, Dukakis, in a tough fight to regain the governor's office, ran several strongly negative ads against Governor Edward J. King, a Democrat, including one that claimed taxpayers were paying a ``corruption tax" during King's term. Another Dukakis ad, which was quickly pulled, featured a man calling King a ``son-of-a bleep."

Yes. And wasn't the Dukakis-for-prez campaign partially derailed by the Willie Horton ad? There's a "negative ad"
for you (a FACTUAL one!)

from Wikipedia: Horton "is a convicted felon who was the subject of a Massachusetts weekend furlough program that released him while serving a life sentence for murder, without the possibility of parole, providing him the opportunity to commit a rape and armed robbery. A political advertisement during the 1988 U.S. Presidential race was critical of the Democratic nominee and Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis for his support of the program...

"There is some disagreement about whether the Republicans first brought up Willie Horton in the campaign, or whether in fact Al Gore did. Some believe that Horton's name first surfaced during the general election. They say that Senator Al Gore raised only the general issue of the furlough program during the 1988 Democratic presidential primary. In June of 1988, after Dukakis had clinched the Democratic Party nomination, Republican candidate George H.W. Bush seized on the Horton case, bringing it up repeatedly in campaign speeches. Bush's campaign manager, Lee Atwater, bragged that "by the time this election is over, Willie Horton will be a household name." Media consultant Roger Ailes was reported to remark "the only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it."

So Dukakis knows well about "attack ads".

of course they are only talking about attack ads on each other, they will still use attack ads on republicans, but really why do the democrats keep trotting out these losers for advice?
I mean if dukakis had a clue how to win wouldn't he have won, I mean they keep using bob shrum and the guy is like 0-10

thank god they are so stupid...

plus they still blame bush 43 for willie horton even though it was al gore that brought it up in the democratic primary

She's kind of laid low--preferring not to take part in debates till her Dem. opponent is officially chosen. If elected she would be the first woman to be elected in her own right as Governor--as opposed to Jane Swift, who served as acting governor after Cellucci took a job as Amb. to Canada. (Swift's
poll numbers were so low she dropped out of the '02 race
and Mitt Romney became the GOP nominee and, eventual, governor.)

http://www.healeycommittee.com/meet_kerry.html

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