Former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey’s campaign is criticizing Karl Rove’s super PAC TV ad for being hypocritical.
The Republican super PAC called Crossroads GPS is airing ads attacking Kerrey for serving on the board of an insurance company called Genworth Financial at the time the company tried to get bailout money through the Trouble Assets Relief Program, or TARP.
As first reported by Nebraska Watchdog last month, Genworth considered buying struggling banks as a way to get bailout money.
Kerrey was on Genworth’s board of directors from 2004 until March, when he stepped down to make a run for the U.S. Senate in Nebraska. He previously served as Nebraska’s junior senator from 1989 to 2001.
The Kerrey campaign noted today that former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, an adviser to American Crossroads, “must have forgotten” that his boss, President George W. Bush, signed the bailout program into law in 2008.
The Kerrey campaign said “many other companies” also considered their options through the federal bailout program.
“If Rove had a problem with this, he should have convinced his boss, President Bush, not to sign the legislation establishing TARP in the first place,” said Paul Johnson, Kerrey’s campaign manager, in a press release. “Rove is hypocritical at best and devious at worst.”
The Kerrey campaign noted that many contributors to the Crossroads PAC accepted TARP money, such as JP Morgan Chase, which received $25 billion, and Morgan Stanley, which took $10 billion.
The Kerrey campaign also took a swipe at its opponent, Republican state Senator Deb Fischer, who benefitted from $250,000 in TV ads by a conservative super PAC the weekend before the primary election.
The Kerrey camp said it’s ironic that Fischer’s victory “was paid for by a Wall Street broker,” Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts.
Ricketts bankrolls the super PAC called Ending Spending, which bought a wave of tough ads attacking Republican Jon Bruning’s ethics, while buying other ads touting Fischer.
“State Senator Deb Fischer owes everything to Wall Street,” Johnson said in a press release. “Joe Ricketts bought her the primary victory with Wall Street cash. Now he and all of his wealthy Wall Street friends will expect something in return. If Fischer goes to Washington, she won’t be serving Main Street.”
Kerrey suggested in his primary night speech that Ricketts was trying to buy access with Fischer.
However, in its first public statement on the issue, the Fischer campaign responded by saying it had no involvement or responsibility for Ending Spending’s actions, or any other third party group.
Fischer’s campaign manager, Aaron Trost, said Fischer won because she ran a grassroots campaign and talked about important issues like balancing the budget and repealing President Obama’s health care overhaul.
And, while much of the national press’s take on Fischer’s win has been that Ricketts’ ads won the election, Trost noted that a week before the primary – and before a single Ending Spending ad had dropped or major endorsement was announced – internal polling showed Fischer down by four points, in a statistical dead heat with Bruning.
“At that point I expected to win because I felt the undecided voters would break our way,” Trost said.
In other campaign news, Kerrey announced that he has accepted an invitation to debate Fischer June 5 at the American Legion Cornhusker Boys State and American Legion Auxiliary Cornhusker Girls State at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He said he hopes Fischer will also accept the invitation to that and “many more debates.”
During the primary campaign, Fischer said she wanted to have as many debates as possible. The Fischer campaign was not immediately available for comment on whether Fischer would attend this debate.
Deena Winter is a reporter for Nebraska Watchdog, which is affiliated with the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity.
