August 11, 2004
Rearing its ugly head again

An anti-immigrant hate group is once again running misleading ads Targeting Marting Frost in the Dallas area.


Democrat Martin Frost and Republican Pete Sessions, both Dallas incumbents vying for the same North Texas seat, wrote separate letters on Friday to Coalition for the Future American Worker urging the anti-immigration group to pull its ads from Dallas-area television stations.

Frost also wrote letters to television stations urging them not to run ads that he says are inaccurate and racially inflammatory.

"North Texans, your viewers and the voters in the 32nd Congressional District, deserve better than to have 3rd party shadow groups with a long history of spewing inaccurate and hateful messages cluttering the airwaves," Frost wrote to the stations. "I again urge you to make the responsible decision and immediately reject these ads."

Sessions called on the coalition to "cease and desist all public activities that pertain to the election."

"The voters of the 32nd Congressional District deserve to hear from the candidates and the candidates alone," Sessions said in a news release.

The candidates pledged earlier this spring to disavow third-party ads in the race after the coalition ran an ad in the Dallas market in April criticizing Frost's stance on immigration.

The ad - which showed a Hispanic man fleeing in one scene and accused immigrants of abusing the U.S. health care system and clogging schools - drew criticism from The Dallas Morning News editorial board, which called it "racially tinged."

Local station KXAS-TV dropped the ad.

As the coalition plans to run more ads in the area, Frost and Sessions have asked it to kindly butt out.

Frost's campaign claims the coalition has purchased nearly $200,000 of TV advertising that will air in the Dallas area Aug. 16-27.


The same thing happened back in April, and similar ads have popped up in other races. I criticized Pete Sessions back then for not denouncing those ads, so let me praise him for doing the right thing this time around. Well done, Rep. Sessions.

As always, the Southern Poverty Law Center has some more info on these creeps. David Neiwert has also written about them.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on August 11, 2004 to Election 2004 | TrackBack
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