Some stations pull anti-Stevens ad

MAT-SU — Representatives from the Sen. Ted Stevens re-election campaign have been largely successful in getting what they call a false advertisement pushed by national Democrats removed from state broadcast media.

So far, four broadcast outlets in Anchorage and six in Fairbanks have stopped airing the advertisement. Although others around the state are pulling the ad, the Mat-Su Valley’s local station, KMBQ, is not.

KMBQ and owner John Klapperich said this past week the station will not pull the ad because he doesn’t have the right to edit or deny a political radio commercial. Klapperich said his station does not play favorites, and taking an ad off the air could appear to be an endorsement of the candidate’s opponent.

Beyond that, the group sponsoring the ad is a paying customer. Klapperich said Thursday he will remove the ad if the organization paying for it requests the station to do so.

The Anchorage law firm of Holmes Weddle & Barcott, which represents the Ted Stevens for Senate Committee, sent a cease broadcast notice to state media outlets after an advertisement paid for by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee began airing.

The law firm says the ad is “factually incorrect and a gross distortion of the real facts.”

In the ad, a conversation between a car salesman and a Ted Stevens impersonator, has the salesman and Stevens haggling about trading in an early-model Ford Mustang for a newer Land Rover. The spot is a reference to an allegation in a July federal indictment that Stevens worked with former VECO CEO Bill Allen to obtain a 1999 Land Rover Discovery, valued at about $44,000, in exchange for a 1964 Ford Mustang worth less than $20,000.

The Stevens campaign is disagreeing with a line in the ad that states: “We know from his indictment Stevens wanted a new Land Rover worth $44,000, so an oil executive worked out a special deal and Stevens got the key to the Land Rover.”

The law firm representing the campaign said the line is incorrect because a federal indictment is a charge and not a statement of facts.

Contact Michael Rovito at michael.rovito@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.