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» Candidate/Organization: Patty Wetterling
» Other Candidates Mentioned: Mark Foley, Michele Bachmann, Patty Wetterling
» Year: 2006
» State: Minnesota
» Race: House, District 6 (About This Race)
» Party: Democratic
» Funded by: Candidate
» Disseminations: TV, Web

Ad Content

» Cues: Black and White, Candidate Present, Children
» Issues: Corruption, Leadership, Values
» Tone: Negative
» Types: Attack
» Characters: Children
» Narrator: Male
» Language: English

Analysis

By The Washington Post: This ad by Wetterling, a Democratic activist, against Bachmann, a Republican state senator, seriously overstates what is known about the actions of House Republican leaders. They have not "admitted covering up the predatory behavior" of former representative Mark Foley, who sent sexually graphic messages to former House pages.

Although there are conflicting accounts of when and what Speaker J. Dennis Hastert was told about Foley, the speaker has maintained that he was told only about an e-mail in which Foley asked a 16-year-old boy for a picture, not the sexually explicit messages that were revealed last week. Hastert has, however, been criticized even by Republicans for not moving more aggressively on the warnings.

The Foley debacle has tightened the Minnesota race and may be tailor-made for Wetterling, a child-safety advocate whose son disappeared 17 years ago. But Bachmann has no particular vulnerability on the issue, because she is not even a member of Congress.

-Howard Kurtz

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