While some progressive groups are targeting conservative Christian radio and others are targeting Christian print media, Catholics United aired radio ads in Virginia, Missouri, North Dakota, Louisiana, and Arkansas, quoting scripture and then thanking specific senators by name “or supporting the economic recovery plan in next year’s budget.”
Titled “Thank You for a Moral Budget,” the ads go on to say, “Our nation and our families are facing great challenges including record unemployment and astronomical health care costs. This budget will lead to long term prosperity by creating clean energy jobs and investing in health care. And these investments serve everyone, not just those at the top. For supporting that which is good for all people, we say Senator [the name of the Senator is inserted at this point], thank you.” [To listen to the ads and read the complete text: www.Catholics-united.org/?q=node/251]
Seven Democratic senators were singled out for kudos after supporting President Barack Obama’s federal budget – Senators Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Jim Webb and Mark Warner of Virginia, and Claire McCaskill of Missouri. They are all legislators of conservative states who were under particular pressure from constituents to oppose the budget.
At the beginning of March 2009, before the budget had been passed, moderate and conservative Democrats had begun to balk over the trillion-dollar proposal. Liberal groups, MoveOn.org and Americans United for Change, aired radio ads during the month, critical of the moderates and causing one, Mark Pryor, to complain, “The liberal groups need to understand that we are not elected to represent the president. We’re elected to represent our states, and we are trying to reflect the attitudes and values of the people who sent us to Washington.”
National Public Radio did several segments around the same time, quoting Sen. Kent Conrad, who was about the budget situation in Washington while a blizzard raged in his state, causing major flooding. “Yes, it's my worst nightmare.” Conrad went on to say, “I believe very strongly that debts at the levels that are being projected now run very serious risks for this country,” – but not strongly enough, evidently to resist the political pressure brought against him, not from the constituents he represents but from his party and from the liberal radio ads targeting major markets in his state.
If negative ads were the stick, one might not be too far afield suggesting that the positive mid-April publicity from Catholic United was the payback – the carrot – for these seven politicians, caught between an unpopular position and the party position.
Stephanie Block is the editor of the New Mexico-based Los Pequenos newspaper and a founder of the Catholic Media Coalition.
Info: MoveOn.org
MoveOn radio ad
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