Campaign Ad

Candidates around the city unsheathed their secret weapons over the weekend, in the last desperate hours of campaigning. Democrat Bill Keller, in two leaflets, accused Republican state Rep. Connie McHugh of betrayal. She betrayed the citizens of her South Philadelphia district by taking $115,000 in perks during her first term, he charged. And, in a carefully written letter, Keller accused her of betraying the revered former Mayor Frank Rizzo. The letter was signed by Rizzo's former campaign manager, Martin Weinberg, and Tony Zecca, a longtime associate of the late mayor.

The ad opens with a shot of Christie Whitman at Drumthwacket, the governor's mansion in Princeton, smiling as she touts New Jersey's remaining open spaces, the Shore and Atlantic City. On the surface, the idea seemed harmless, a new tourism ad featuring the governor in a 30-second television spot that will be aired in markets in the Northeast and Midwest. State tourism officials said the ad was aimed at promoting tourism in New Jersey, a $22 billion-a-year industry that employs nearly a half-million people.

The nursing-home industry, reeling from large cuts in the Medicare budget, wants Congress to put billions of dollars back into health-care programs for the nation's elderly. Sen. William V. Roth Jr. (R., Del.), currently waging a tough campaign for reelection, is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and thus in a key position to address the nursing-home industry's money problems. Last week, the Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care, an offshoot of the industry's Washington lobby, launched a television advertising campaign that features the senator and asks viewers to "thank Bill Roth for leading the fight to protect Medicare.

IF YOU'RE a North Carolinian who was going to vote for Republican B.J. Lawson because Morgan Freeman told you to, you may want to reconsider. Freeman is disputing the candidate's claim that he did a voiceover for a campaign ad. He said in a statement through his publicist yesterday that he never recorded any ads for Lawson and does not support his candidacy. Lawson is trying to unseat Democratic Rep. David Price . The ad features a narrator with a voice that resembles Freeman's.

A very strange story, a 6,000-word front-page New York Times piece on how, every Tuesday, Barack Obama shuffles "baseball cards" with the pictures and bios of suspected terrorists from around the world and chooses who shall die by drone strike. He even reserves for himself the decision of whether to proceed when the probability of killing family members or bystanders is significant.   The article could have been titled "Barack Obama: Drone Warrior. " Great detail on how Obama personally runs the assassination campaign.

The task of defending Mitt Romney's taped remarks about dependency on government - and, to a lesser extent, 1998 remarks attributed to President Obama about redistributing wealth - fell Wednesday to local campaign surrogates. Gov. Corbett held a news conference arranged by Romney's campaign. Though he didn't mention the Republican presidential nominee's comments until prodded by a reporter, he said he believed the nation was moving toward what he called "a totally dependent mentality.

If you love a good debate, better get your fill Monday night when President Obama and Mitt Romney exchange pleasantries for the third and final time. Because if you live in Philadelphia, you'll have to wait till 2014, at least, to see your member of Congress trade verbal elbows with a challenger. All but assured of victory, Democratic incumbents Bob Brady, Chaka Fattah and Allyson Schwartz have scheduled no debates with their opponents. "This is really a typical sort of strategy you would see in an incumbent that's in a fairly safe district, and is trying to keep any oxygen from his opponent," said Lara Brown, a Villanova political scientist.

HARRISBURG - During his 2010 gubernatorial campaign, Tom Corbett made the funding of an Arlen Specter library in Philadelphia the punch line of a campaign ad about wasteful government spending. Think of that funding, Corbett said in the television ad, "next time you hear we have to raise taxes because there's nothing left to cut. " Now, the joke may be on him. This week, Gov. Corbett signed off on a $1.9 million state grant for the library that will house Specter's papers and memorabilia - along with an office for the former Pennsylvania senator.

U.S. SEN. Bob Casey Jr. is not the first to confront this question: With political allies like Ed Rendell , who needs enemies? Casey is just the latest. Pennsylvania's former governor grumbled this week to the Scranton Times-Tribune that Casey is running a "non-campaign" for a second term against Tom Smith , a former coal-company owner from Armstrong County who has dumped $16.5 million of his own money into the race. To be fair, Rendell has a point. Casey has been running variations of one campaign ad on television, casting Smith as a radical tea-party guy who wants to privatize Social Security and convert Medicare into a voucher program.

A PHILLYCLOUT favorite, former City Councilman Rick Mariano could be doing electrical work at a job site near you any day now. Mariano, who was sentenced to six years for corruption, is set to leave the minimum-security federal prison in Lewisburg, Pa., Monday and move to a halfway house in Juniata Park, according to an e-mail he sent to friends and family on Sunday titled "8 Days to Go. " In the note, Mariano said he hoped to...