~B & J

Lincoln, Pryor Targeted In Radio Attack Ads

This article was published on Monday, March 12, 2007 9:03 PM CDT in News

By Aaron Sadler
The Morning News

WASHINGTON -- Arkansas' U.S. senators are the targets of a blistering radio advertising campaign that started Monday and is funded by an illegal immigration foe from Fort Smith.

Joe McCutchen, whose stiff anti-immigration stance put him on a civil rights group's watch list, paid for the weeklong ad blitz urging Sens. Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor, D-Ark., to take stronger stances on illegal immigration.

McCutchen said Monday he paid for airtime on stations that cover the western half of the state. Each 30-second spot directs listeners to call the senators' offices and plugs McCutchen's Web site.

Spokesmen for Lincoln and Pryor said their offices had not received any calls in reference to the campaign as of late Monday.

Pryor spokesman Michael Teague accused McCutchen of telling a "half truth" in one advertisement, which states that both senators opposed funding construction of a 700-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Teague said Pryor cast some "no" votes during debate on a funding mechanism, but eventually supported an appropriations bill to fund the fence. Lincoln also supported the bill, her spokeswoman said.

"Anybody that has money can get a Web site and have airtime," Teague said.

No immigration legislation is pending in Congress, but McCutchen said he thought immigration reform bills -- which could include granting amnesty to many illegal immigrants -- might come up at any time.

"I have thought they would backdoor this thing over a weekend," he said. "There was no good time to launch this campaign."

McCutchen and his wife, Barbara, have helped guard the border as part of the Minuteman Project. He was a minuteman three times, but left the group because he said it had been taken over by Washington-based neoconservatives.

His ads demand Lincoln and Pryor oppose amnesty and government benefits to illegal immigrants.

He said the two lawmakers have sold out their constituents in favor of "open-borders, cheap labor, corporate America."

The senators last year voted to create a guest worker program that would allow illegal immigrants to apply for legal status. That clashed with a House bill that did not contain guest worker provisions, and Congress adjourned last year without adopting any comprehensive immigration reform measures.

McCutchen said the immigration problem is destroying the nation, particularly its middle class.

Last spring, McCutchen was flagged by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a "nativist," or one who thinks immigrants cannot be Americans. A spokeswoman for that group characterized his views as racist and anti-Semitic and said he was allied with hate organizations.

McCutchen on Monday said he is not affiliated with any group and he is funding his campaign alone.

"If defending the Constitution and the rule of law is supported by I don't care who, then I'm on the right path," he said.