ATTACK POLITICAL ADS ARE DONE ON THE LOCAL LEVEL, TOO

Anyone who follows politics knows that attack ads have become commonplace in state and national campaigns. You don't see it occur on the local level too often, but voters in Daytona Beach are seeing it days before their municipal election Tuesday.

The Daytona Beach News Journal reports this morning that a group known as Citizens for Integrity in Government is responsible for the brochures and radio ads attacking mayoral candidate and former city commissioner Mike Shallow, who is challenging incumbant Yvonne Scarlett-Golden:

The ads highlight a 1991 arrest on charges of drunken driving and marijuana possession, as well as a bankruptcy and federal tax liens in Boston and a foreclosure complaint for unpaid property taxes here. The arrest charges were reduced to reckless driving. Also the liens and local property taxes were paid.

The group behind the ads lists as it's treasurer William Arsenault, who launched a similar attack-ad campaign under a different organization name.

This is really a repeat of four years ago, when Shallow and Scarlett-Golden faced off and Shallow lost by only five percentage points. The Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Lafferty predicted this would happen:

Sadly, this campaign will take a very negative turn very quickly. Shallow will feel compelled to mount an aggressive offense before Scarlett-Golden's surrogates whip out the kind of attack ads they produced in 2003.

Oh, my. This will get ugly.

Why is it that we can't be adults and focus on the serious issues in a campaign? If someone has a serious issue of character; that it, if a candidate did not resolve his/her personal issues, then it should be "on the table". If a candidate has had issues of malfeasance in office or business, then it should be "on the table" for voters to consider. But in this case, the candidate's legal and tax issues were all resolved. Most folks would call that an attempt at slander.