From AP RALEIGH, N.C. – Republican Rep. Robin Hayes attacks Democratic challenger Larry Kissell for allegedly skirting the law in a blistering new campaign ad.
The ad began running Tuesday.
The five-term incumbent from Concord knocks Kissell for handing in a 2006 campaign report late and revives an earlier claim that the Democrat cheated his workers by not paying into unemployment insurance and workers compensation funds. Hayes also questions why a Kissell camapign brochure accuses the Republican of voting for trade policies “like NAFTA and CAFTA” because he wasn’t in Congress when the first deal was passed.
Kissell campaign spokesman Tom Thacker said the election fine stems from a report that was handed in one day late. Thacker said Hayes’ focus on his challenger instead of the economy shows the Republican’s priorities are misplaced.
October 25th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
The ad has some truth to it, but it IS misleading. The Kissell for Congress employees are independent contractors. There is nothing wrong with a company (or campaign) that is running on a very very tight budget to hire independent contractors. I have worked for various small companies over the years as an independent contactor. That is the state of our economy. Is Robin Hayes saying that there is something wrong with independent contractors? The Kissell for Congress staffers could have (and should have) negotiated their contracts to include extra money for benefits. Does Robin Hayes know for sure that these employees did not? Does Robin Hayes think there is something wrong with small companies using contract labor in order to help them cut costs? As a Republican, the Hayes message that he doesn’t support small businesses might hurt him.
I am currently doing a job that a full time employee with benefits should be doing for a large American company – IBM. Yet I’m a contractor with no health, vacation or unemployment benefits. Does that make IBM a bad company? No. I didn’t have to take a contract job. Just as the Kissell employees didn’t have to sign on for their jobs. I always thought that this was common practice in campaigns. Larry Kissell had a very small war chest and was taking on a deeply entrenched incumbent candidate with fat coffers. I’m sure every staffer on Kissell’s campaign gladly signed on as a contractor to help their underdog candidate have more money to fight the good fight.
October 25th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
This is ALL the Rethuglicans have Robert.
They take a tiny kernel of truth and build a huge pile of LIES around it in order to sully the reputation of the democratic opponent.
They can NOT talk about the issues because they are dead wrong on ALL of them.
Lets just hope the vast majority of the country can manage to get past all the election fraud the rethuglicans are currently committing and vote these lunatics out in massive numbers so that there is a Democrat super majority in the House & Senate and Obama wins then the Democrats have absolutely no excuse to not implement what needs to be done to turn this country around before it is way too late.