By MIKE McINTIRE
New York Times
Published: August 30, 2007
When an out-of-state video crew showed up last winter in La Junta, Colo., an old railroad town, crew members told Mayor Don Rizzuto they were making a documentary on the impact of factory closings on rural America. That seemed believable, Mr. Rizzuto said, since La Junta, population 7,600, had recently lost 153 jobs with the shuttering of a pickle processing plant.
But Mr. Rizzuto was surprised to learn that when the video appeared on the Internet this year, it had a very different focus. It blamed Senator Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle, who was on the board of the company that closed the pickle plant, for the job losses.
The video is one of several posted on a Web site, ObamaTruth.org, and circulated on YouTube, where they have received a combined 50,000 viewings. There is nothing on ObamaTruth.org that identifies anyone involved in it. But the site is registered to a veteran political operative from Chicago who works for J. Patrick Rooney, an Indiana insurance magnate known for bankrolling racially charged advertisements attacking Democrats.
...In the current presidential contest, the ObamaTruth.org project is one of the more sophisticated assaults on a candidate, with downloadable videos titled “The Audacity of Barack Obama” and periodic press releases announcing updates. The Obama campaign declined to comment. The operative behind it is Joe Novak, 54, a consultant whose colorful history in Illinois politics earned him the nickname Low Blow Joe. A Chicago Sun-Times columnist once wrote that if dirty tricks were an art form, “Novak would be Renoir.”
Since he retired 10 years ago as chairman of the Golden Rule Insurance Company, Mr. Rooney has emerged as a major financial backer of two pro-Republican groups, America’s PAC and the Council for Better Government, which ran advertisements intended to discourage members of minorities from voting for Democrats. Typical of these were radio spots in the 2006 Congressional elections linking Democratic candidates to the white supremacist David Duke and accusing Democrats of supporting abortions for blacks. Another advertisement featured a dialogue between two men, one of whom said he opposed abortion, even “if you make a little mistake with one of your hos.”
...In the 2004 presidential campaign, Mr. Rooney gave financing to a group, People of Color United, for radio advertisements attacking Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee, for calling herself an African-American. Ms. Heinz Kerry, who is white, was born and raised in Mozambique. Mr. Rooney, who is white, told The Washington Post at the time that he supported the group, “because the genuine word from the black community should be heard, not white folks saying it for them.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/30/us/politics/30obama.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
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