Merkley campaign prepares negative barrage against Novick
After months of running a lackluster campaign and failing to gain traction, erstwhile Democratic front-runner, Jeff Merkley, is preparing a negative campaign to take down primary rival, Steve Novick.
Novick, whose low budget campaign has earned points for original concepts, including a highly successful commercial that was released virally on the web, and even the release of his own brand of beer, appears to have moved ahead of Merkley for the right to challenge Gordon Smith and John Frohnmayer in the general election race for US Senate.
Predictably, the Merkley campaign is now preparing to go negative. In the last few days, he has begun polling on the following lines of attack against Novick, Julia Silverman of the AP reported today.
"Novick is a pro-tax advocate, repeatedly supporting higher taxes for the middle classes, running on a proposal to raise Social Security taxes and falling for false Republican claims that if we don't do this, Social Security will go bankrupt."
Voters were also asked what in Novick's "background" concerned them most: "that he is a pro-tax advocate, political consultant, or that he is a divider."
The move is likely to backfire on Merkley, as it will contrast him not only to Novick, but to Presidential candidate, Barack Obama, who has resisted several similar temptations to take a negative line against opponent, Hillary Clinton.
not to mention
the fact that if I'm not mistaken, Obama is ALSO in favor of raising the Social Security wage cap.
Novick is against campaign finance reform
Merkley could make a substantive attack by pointing out that Novick is against campaign finance reform and has actually argued that politicians and the public would be better off if there were even more millions of dollars in political campaign coffers, so that the big money boys could even more completely control the government. Don't believe it? See Steve NOvick's Anti Campaign Finance Reform Article at BlueOregon