4th District race gets heated with release of new Love, McAdams campaign ads
(KUTV) — U.S. Representative Mia Love and her opponent, Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams, released new commercials on Tuesday attacking one another.
One takes a jab at the past, the other takes a stab at campaign financing.
“What do Washington politicians do when caught with a million dollars in illegal contributions? Mia Love kept the money,” said the narrator in McAdams' new commercial, which attacks Love’s campaign financing.
Rep. Love got a letter from the Federal Election Commission questioning the more than $1 million she raised for a primary election that never happened because she didn’t have an opponent.
The FEC themselves, in the letter they provided the Love campaign, told her these funds were raised in violation of the law,” said Andrew Roberts, McAdams campaign manager. “She kept that money and she’s now spending it illegally to attack Ben McAdams.
But Love’s campaign calls the letter from the FEC “routine,” saying she could use the money for the convention or the general election, and they say the law allows them to do that.
So, the money can be re-designated to the general election. There is nothing wrong with that. It’s done all the time in campaigns across the country,” said Love campaign manager Dave Hansen. “It’s absolutely false. They are not illegal funds, nobody has said they are illegal funds. This is nothing more than a political stunt on their part.
The Love campaign released their own commercial bringing up McAdams' past with a connection to former president Bill Clinton.
“Hello Ben, this is Bill Clinton, thanks for all your help first as my intern in the White House and then when you moved to New York to work on Hillary’s Senate campaign,” said the beginning of the commercial. It then talks about McAdams supporting Hillary’s run for president and how he will now work well with Senate Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
“I mean, that’s where he got his training, and that’s where we wanted to make sure the voters of the 4th District understand that,” said Hansen about the new commercial.
But Roberts says it’s nothing more than a stretch to get off the real issues of the day.
“Dredging up a decades-old college internship is exactly what a Washington, D.C. politician does when they are embroiled in scandal,” he said.
