Pence Goes Negative
October 21st, 2008 at 11:08 am by Jim Shella under Jim Shella's Political Blog
Years ago (22 to be exact) Evan Bayh got elected Indiana Secretary of State by running on issues (like education) that had nothing to do with the duties of the office.
Now, Democrat Linda Pence hopes the same approach will get her elected Attorney General. Pence has a new negative ad complete with a clouded, black and white shot of Republican opponent Greg Zoeller. In it, she tries to convince voters that the Attorney General is a prosecutor, when in fact the job description calls mostly for handling appeals.
In the ad, Pence quotes Zoeller saying, “I’m not proposing to be a prosecutor.” Pence, meantime, promises to be a “tough prosecutor.”
Zoeller plans a news conference tomorrow to explain his side of things, but, if he remembers Evan Bayh’s success, he might want to get a response ad up, too.
Tags: Evan Bayh, Greg Zoeller, Linda Pence
Actually Zoeller brags about his “93% “conviction rate” in one of his ads. You don’t “convict” someone on appeal…that’s done at the trial level. He should be saying that he (or his office) has a 93% success in getting convictions upheld on appeal. I’m not sure that’s a particularly good rate as most criminal appeals are automatic slam dunks.
Bayh talked about a lot of issues that did not relate to the AG’s office. The AG though clearly has a lot more power under Indiana law than is currently being exercised. For example, there is no prohibition in the law on the AG investigating mortgage fraud for example and cooperating with prosecutors on any prosecutions they should decide to pursue. The AG can’t prosecute, but the AG can certainly investigate.