Renewing a charge he’s repeatedly made in recent debates, Republican U.S. Senate candidate George Allen is accusing opponent Timothy M. Kaine of being an absentee governor in a new TV ad.
The ad, titled “Wants Me to Do,” opens with a quote from Kaine in 2010, 10 months after Kaine’s term as governor, in which he is asked if he would stay on as Democratic National Committee chairman after the November elections.
“I’m doing what the president wants me to do,” he said.
The ad’s narrator accuses Kaine of “abandoning Virginia while governor, putting the president’s harmful agenda first” when he became “President Obama’s national party chairman.”
Kaine spent his final year as governor as Democratic National Committee chairman.
The ad goes on to accuse Kaine of “supporting [Obama’s] failed stimulus, national energy tax, government takeover of healthcare, and the deal leading to defense cuts that threaten 200,000 Virginia jobs.”
The latter charge refers to the so-called sequestration established as part of last year’s bipartisan debt deal, agreed to by congress and the president.
Calling it “an out-of-context, false attack” Kaine’s campaign responded to the ad with an exhaustive memo and fact-check, noting among other things that Allen once served as National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman.
The Kaine campaign also noted that Allen had praised former Republican Gov. Jim Gilmore when he was selected as Republican National Committee chairman, and that current Gov. Bob McDonnell once described Kaine’s role as DNC chairman as “good for me, good for Virginia.”
