tough, but casual. They call him wrangler. They look like campaign ads, they smell like campaign ads, and they sure as hell sound like campaign ads. But Jeff Merkley insists they're not campaign ads.
The TV spots started airing early this month. In the first of them, Merkley talks about how America has mistreated veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the next, he touts the record of the Oregon Legislature, and himself as House speaker, in toughening laws against meth and child sexual abusers. In the third, he attacks wasteful spending in Washington and brags about how, as a legislator, he worked to "put the middle class first."
The ads aren't being funded by the Merkley campaign; the Democratic Party of Oregon is paying for them, using money from the national Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. And that's where the problem is.
Federal law limits the amount of campaign money a US Senate candidate can receive from his state and national party to $485,200. Merkley had already gotten more than $386,000 from the party before the first of the ads was released. That's why the Merkley ads prompted Republican Gordon Smith's campaign to file a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission.
