Republican candidate for governor Jay Dardenne has started his TV advertising with a spot that appears to take aim at the race’s GOP front-runner U.S. Sen. David Vitter without naming him.
The Associated Press reports that in the 30-second spot, a narrator describes Dardenne, the state’s lieutenant governor, as holding elected offices for 25 years without a “hint of scandal,” a seeming swipe at Vitter’s prostitution scandal.
The ad says Dardenne “talks straight because he’s not a Washington politician. He brings us together. He doesn’t drive a wedge through our heart with partisan politics.” It calls Dardenne a governor who will “make Louisiana proud.”
He’s not the only one striking at Vitter’s link to a Washington prostitution ring in 2007. An outside political action committee called the Louisiana Water Coalition is airing TV and radio spots reminding voters more directly of the prostitution scandal. Vitter has called that a “gutter campaign against me full of stale attacks.”
While Dardenne and other candidates may want to remind voters of Vitter’s past now, The Shreveport Times reports that Dardenne sent a handwritten note of encouragement to Vitter following the scandal in 2007. The Vitter campaign provided the letter to Gannett Louisiana, publisher of The Shreveport Times, without commenting on it.
With his new ad started Tuesday, Dardenne becomes the last of the four major contenders in the race to enter the television campaign. His TV advertising begins with fewer than six weeks before the Oct. 24 election.
Republican Scott Angelle, a member of the Public Service Commission, has been advertising for months, while Vitter went up with his first ad in August. Democrat John Bel Edwards, a state representative, started airing his first TV spot over the Labor Day holiday.
Dardenne’s campaign says it will remain on air uninterrupted until election day. Dardenne has said he waited until this month to advertise because voters hadn’t been keeping track of the governor’s race until now.
In the last round of campaign finance reports, Vitter had $5 million in his campaign account, compared to nearly $1.9 million for Dardenne, nearly $1.1 million for state Rep. John Bel Edwards and just over $1 million for Angelle. A separate political action committee supporting Vitter reported $4.4 million, far more than PACs supporting other contenders.
