Winning Ugly in Wisconsin - Talk about a Swiftboat

[RoadRage]

If you have the chance - read this story about a liberal judge who was totally railroaded by a conservative judge - and who just lost his seat to the conservative. Something really NEEDS to be done about these 3rd party groups who have no accountability but seemingly unlimited $$$ to run false ads against people.


Winning Ugly in Wisconsin
April 4, 2008
In Wisconsin's Supreme Court race the winner was on the side that threw the most mud.
Summary
In a Wisconsin throwdown, incumbent Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler narrowly lost his reelection bid after being hit with a barrage of deceptive attack ads. We've written about some of them in recent weeks.

Attack ads targeting the incumbent heavily outnumbered attacks aimed at the business-backed winner, Circuit Court Judge Mike Gableman. In the closing days of the campaign the ratio was roughly 2 to 1.

A misleading attack ad that ran hundreds of times implied that the incumbent overturned a murder conviction despite overwhelming evidence of the convicted man's guilt. Actually, Butler based his ruling on new DNA evidence that undercut a key part of the prosecution's case.

One of the most heavily run ads of the campaign misleadingly accused the incumbent of focusing on "needless technicalities" when, on an evidentiary question, he sided with a husband accused of poisoning his wife in the well-publicized "letter from the grave" case. In fact, the point Butler raised was a question of constitutional rights important enough for the U.S. Supreme Court to have taken on in its current term.

Butler blamed his narrow loss on heavy spending by independent groups that he said "siphoned huge amounts of money into this race" without disclosing where it came from. We can't say for sure that money or misleading attacks were decisive in this race. However, the facts are that the margin of victory was small, and most of the mud was slung by the winning side.

Story continued at link: http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/winning_ugly_in_wisconsin.html

[MidwestTransplant]

1. Sickening that even the judicial branch of state gov. is poisoned by this.

[bbgrunt]

2. just goes to show that supposedly aware

Wi citizens who voted for Feingold's no mud campaigns and who did not fall for Clinton's lies about Obama not willing to debate, are susceptible to the lies and mud of negative campaigning. What a shame.

[RoadRage]

3. I agree..

This shows that justice truly can be "bought". If you have enough money, you can throw it around, make up lies and fabrications and sell them on TV to get yourself a position. No wonder this country doubts its government - but I do think people need to do a much better job of investigating issues themselves instead of swallowing whatever the media is selling that day (or week or month).