As the legislature prepared to hammer out a fix for the public campaign finance law, Senate Minority leader John McKinney held a press conference and decried the pervasiveness of negative ads.
He kicked things off by screening two spots by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Malloy and Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Fedele. Each ad (linked below) contained harsh words about the business experience of their respective opponents, Ned Lamont and Tom Foley.
Both Malloy and Fedele are accepting public funds, which means, according to McKinney, that the ads are "paid for by the taxpayers of the state of Connecticut.
"Those are negative attack ads. They don't tell you anything about the candidate, what the candidates policies are, what they're going to do about our state budget defecit, what they're going to do about an unemployment rate at nearly 10 percent,'' McKinney said. "People are sick and tired of this kind of negative campaign ad.''
And using public money makes it all the more offensive, McKinney said, adding that he strong opposes increasing grant for gubernatorial candidates to $6 million.
"Here we are today in the face of our worst economic recession and they want to increase spending $6 million,'' McKinney said. "Boy, these food banks could use that $6 million.,..our homeless shelters could use that $6 million, kids in our inner cities could use that $6 million. But no, we're going to feed it to politicians to run that crap. That is wrong and we will stand up as a caucus and say enough is enough."