Majority Action releases another ad in the Senate race

Majority Action released an advertisement in the Senate race Tuesday trying to bring to light what they believe to be U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith’s record of supporting the Iraq war and big oil companies.

This is the fourth ad the national 527 group founded by George Soros has run in the Oregon Senate race this campaign cycle. The group has been focusing on Senate races around the country. Oregon was the first state in which Majority Action aired Senate ads, and it has since expanded to North Carolina and Colorado.

Marjority Action’s Bill Buck, one of the Democratic strategists behind the group, said the goal of the organization was to move the national conversation along in a more progressive nature. That has involved focusing on what he says is Republican hypocracy on oil and gas issues.

“I think Gordon Smith is trying to hide his record,” Buck said. "

“These special interests have their facts wrong – Gordon Smith stood up to President Bush, calling for an end to the war in Iraq. Smith teamed-up with Barack Obama to increase car mileage standards and voted for the largest investment in energy independence in history,” Smith spokeswoman Lindsay Gilbride said.

The ad says that the billions Smith spent by supporting the war could have been spent by working to break U.S. dependency on foreign oil. It ends by asking Oregon voters to ask Smith to approve of Senate Bill 3125, which is supposed to extend tax credits to renewable energy.

But according to Gilbride, Smith supported four similar issues, including most recently Senate Bill 3335, in support of tax credits and renewable energy. That made her question why the ad chose to focus on energy independence in the first place.

“The new ad asks Gordon Smith to support measures he has already repeatedly voted for,” Gilbride said.

The last time Majority Action ran an ad, the Smith campaign responded by running television commercials touting Smith’s work with Democratic senators, including John Kerry (D-Mass.) and presidential candidate Barack Obama (D-Ill.). As to what will come out of this round of advertising, Buck could only guess.

“It might be nice to see Smtih change his stance and stand up for American consumers instead of the Oregon gas industry,” Buck said.