Ugliness in CD 32

If you judge a person by who his or her opponents are, Rep. Martin Frost is looking good right about now: An anti-immigration organization called the Coalition of Future American Workers which has ties to a racist group is running ads that denounce him.

The advertisements, which are scheduled to run into next week on Dallas' ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC affiliate stations, feature dark images of black and Hispanic people with an off-camera voice stating that Mr. Frost supports legislation that would allow immigrants to crowd schools, drive down worker wages and deplete the job pool.

They do not mention [Frost's opponent, Rep. Pete] Sessions, nor do they allude to the congressmen's congressional race in Texas' 32nd District, which political experts rank among the most high-profile and potentially expensive in the nation.

Federal records show that the Coalition for the Future American Worker's member organizations receive financing from other organizations, such as the Pioneer Fund, which studies racial differences and counts Nazi sympathizers among its founders.

How did the Sessions campaign react to this?

Sessions campaign manager Chris Homan said Mr. Sessions has no knowledge of the organization sponsoring the advertisements, the Coalition for the Future American Worker, and no involvement with them.

"We're not going to engage groups like this in any capacity," Mr. Homan said.

Note that there was no denunciation of the ads or their sponsor. Just a data point for you.

The ads themselves are apparently pretty vague about what offense against native born Americans Martin Frost is supposed to have committed.

The advertisements do not cite specific legislation, only saying, "Martin Frost is sponsoring a bill to give amnesty to up to 1.2 million illegal aliens in Texas."

[CFAW spokesman Dan] Stein said the advertisements primarily refer to two bills concerning immigration: House Bill 3274 and House Bill 1684. His organization "only had so much room in the text of the ad" and left some information out, Mr. Stein said.

Mr. Frost said that no bill he is sponsoring or co-sponsoring will ever give amnesty in Texas to hundreds of thousands of undocumented workers.

"I have no idea what they're talking about, quite frankly," Mr. Frost said. "I'm for the freedom of the press. I'm for the First Amendment. But I'm not for people to lie with impunity."

David Neiwert points to some background on John Tanton, the godfather of many anti-immigrant organizations like CFAW. I can't find a direct statement to verify what he says about Tanton being CFAW's founder, but Tanton was the founder and funder of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), for whom the Dan Stein quoted in the DMN article is the executive director (more info here). That's close enough for me. These same guys also apparently ran a similar ad in Iowa during the Democratic caucus which attacked all of the candidates.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on April 07, 2004 to Election 2004 | TrackBack