'Diversity' Leads To Controversy
A controversial political ad in Kansas City, paid for by an independent conservative group, is causing headaches for George W. Bush, reports CBS News Correspondent Bill Whitaker.
The controversy? A disparaging remark about diversity in public schools.
The ad, written by conservative Richard Nadler of the Republican Ideas Political Committee, has a fictional mother saying she had to put her son in a private school because public schools had "a bit more diversity then he could handle."
Democrats call it "race-baiting."
The ad’s sponsor says it’s not about bad kids but good Republican policy on school choice.
"I'm absolutely not a bigot," says Nadler, of Overland Park, Kan. "These ads, this whole series of ads are about capitol issues. They make serious, substantive points and they do so without any slur upon any group whatsoever, except possibly liberals."
The end of the ad urges people to vote Republican. It’s the kind of help the Bush campaign says it doesn’t want.
"Gov. Bush is very concerned," said Bush spokeswoman Karen Hughes. "He strongly disagrees with the sentiments expressed in this commercial, he believes most Americans will reject it."
Bush rejects the ad, but says it’s protected free speech. Either way, it's part of an exploding, some say out-of-control, political trend: election-year issue ads, more and more of them by outside groups.
Most, like an ad the Sierra Club ran for the Democrats, are welcomed by the parties. According to a report out Wednesday, more than 125 organizations have spent more than $342 million on issue ads so far this year, more than in the last two election years combined.
"In the contest of competeing ideas we are more likely in the contested states to hear the voices of the issues advocates on these issues then we are the voices of our two presidential candidates," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a media expert at the University of Pennsylvania.
And ugly or not, they can work. The controversial Willie Horton ad produced by an outside group helped George W. Bush’s father win the presidency in 1988 by painting Democrat Michael Dukakis as soft on crime.
Missouri's Republican gubernatorial candidate, Jim Talent, took to the House floor Wednesday to ask that the "diversity" ad be taken off the air.
"Since the ad asks people to vote Republican, I think Republicans have a special responsibility to denounce it," Talent said.
Nadler earlier had told The Kansas City Star that he would not withdraw the ad, which has drawn protests from Democrats and from the state Republican Party.
The ad is scheduled to run in Kansas City until Oct. 6 and Nadler had indicated that it may be scheduled to run in other cities as well.
Nadler has said the word diversity refers to drugs and violence in schools, not race.
The ad starts with a view of a couple an their two children and begins by touting Education Savings Accounts, which give parents a tax break on money they save to pay college costs.
The mother says that their daughter attended public schools and was an honor student. Her account helped put her through college. But their son began hanging out with the wrong crowd.
The scene fades to a group of three boys sitting around a table. All three appear to be white. One has a beer in his hand. Two students, apparently one white and one black, are sitting on steps in the background.
Suddenly, one of the boys at the table brandishes a gun. The mother intones: "We didn't want him where drugs and violence were fashionable. That was a bit more diversity than he could handle. So we sent him to a private school run by our church. There he gets more attention and the moral expectations are higher.''