Candidate Who Denounced Negative Ads Won’t Denounce Negative Ad
The Republican candidate in New York’s 20th Congressional District special election, Jim Tedisco — who loudly denounced negative ads in his race against Democrat Scott Murphy — isn’t denouncing a new ad from the National Republican Congressional Committee that shows a minute’s worth of terrorist mugshots while playing an audio clip of Murphy saying he opposes the death penalty for Osama bin Laden. It’s odd, because polls and anecdotal evidence suggest that slash-attacking third-party ads are hurting Tedisco, and the damage has been amplified by his high-profile promise to run a positive race.