Bad Times for Freedom's Watch [1]
Submitted by Diane Farsetta [2] on
The Freedom's Watch Louisiana ad
A recent New York Times [3] story describes the Republican-linked pro-war group Freedom's Watch [4] as "beset by internal problems" and unclear on "what kind of role, if any, it will actually play this fall" in the U.S. presidential elections [5]. Freedom's Watch is currently running ads [6] in Louisiana which claim that the Democratic candidate in a special Congressional election supports higher taxes. The ads prompted a formal complaint from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee [7], accusing Freedom's Watch of illegally coordinating with the National Republican Congressional Committee [8] (NRCC). The Democrats point out that the "metadata" of the ad script file identifies the NRCC as the originator, and that former NRCC employee Carl Forti [9] -- who now works for Freedom's Watch -- was the last person to edit the script. They note that the Freedom's Watch ad and an NRCC ad for the same race [10] use the same graphics and similar scripts, and the Freedom's Watch ad debuted the day after the NRCC stopped airing its ad. Patrick McCarthy [11], who wrote the ad for Freedom's Watch, said "an innocent mistake caused the document to appear as if it came from the NRCC," reported the Washington Post [12]. McCarthy, a former NRCC employee, "said he pulled up an old ad template from his NRCC days and wrote the Louisiana ad script over it."