Gov. Pat Quinn is taking exception to former GOP Chairman Andy McKenna's latest anti-Quinn TV ad, arguing that McKenna's camp fabricated their claim that Quinn mishandled the state budget.
The new ad, titled "Only," attacks Quinn, claiming the state's budget problem is growing worse while the governor "hides the truth."
The words "hides the truth" are shown in the ad, without quotes, with "Chicago Tribune, 11/18/09" beneath, giving the appearance that the newspaper used the words.
It never did.
"It is unfortunate that Chairman McKenna believes the only way to win Republican votes is to misrepresent the facts about Governor Quinn’s honest and responsible handling of the state budget crisis," the Quinn campaign said in a statement.
McKenna's campaign is standing by the ad. Spokesman Lance Trover defended the wording as a fair summary of facts reported by the newspaper and not an attempt to mislead people into thinking the Tribune accused Quinn of hiding something. He maintains it’s not misleading because the ad doesn’t use quotation marks around the phrase, TheCapitolFaxBlog.com reported.
It’s not the first time that a Republican statewide candidate for governor in Illinois has resorted to the use of misleading newspaper attributions. In his failed 2006 race for the GOP nomination for governor, businessman James D. Oberweis used four fake headlines from real newspapers across the state in his TV advertising, the Chicago Tribune reported.
See McKenna's new ad:
