Peter Gay: ‘Tis the season to be nauseated – The Sun Chronicle
It’s that time of year again when watching television makes chills run up my spine.
The chills have nothing to do with my directive to not turn up the heat until after Trick or Treat (I stole that from Father Pregana at St. John’s Church in Attleboro) or the trailers for horror movies like “Halloween Ends” starring Jamie Lee Curtis.
The true horror is the barrage of political commercials on TV that pop up every time there is a local station break.
It’s more frightening in this area than others because we receive stations from two capital cities. My family typically watches Boston channels 5 and 7 and Providence’s channel 10. As a result, we’re not only bombarded with advertisements from Massachusetts and Rhode Island politicians, we also see numerous ads for the New Hampshire senatorial race between Democratic incumbent Maggie Hassen and Republican Don Bolduc.
I realize political ads leading up to presidential and midterm elections always push the limits. This year’s ads seem to have hit a new low, they’re also more confusing than ever.
Take the Rhode Island congressional race for example. I certainly remember Republican Allan Fung from his failed attempt to become the state’s governor but had never heard of Seth Magaziner until his commercials started running sometime during the summer. I seem to remember the ads he ran stating he was a Democrat.
The latest commercials from the Congressional Leadership Fund had made questioning his party affiliation, however. The ads paint Magaziner as someone born with a silver spoon in his mouth running simply to push tax cuts for himself, his family and the ultra-rich like him.
Wasn’t that always a page from the playbook of someone running against a Republican?
I looked up the organization sponsoring the anti-Magaziner advertisements. The CLF is a super political action committee dedicated to electing Republicans to the House of Representatives.
Fung is also under attack by a PAC supporting candidates on the other side of the aisle. A group known as the House Majority PAC is running ads tying the Republican to Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The ads make it sound like a national ban on abortion is certain if Rhode Islanders elect the former Cranston mayor.
The New Hampshire race between Hassan and Bolduc also made me racing to my computer to find out more. Bolduc, an election denier who believes Trump won reelection two years ago and had vowed to decertify results in 2024, is painting Hassan as soft on crime and someone who wants to defund the police. Bolduc now says the Trump loss was not fraudulent.
A political action committee working on Hassan’s behalf has countered with a county sheriff stating, “Hassan’s done the opposite of defunding the police. In every budget as governor, Hassan increased funding for police, and it’s no different with Maggie in the Senate.”
Confusing, right? And to think the outcome may shift the balance of power in the nation’s capital.
The Massachusetts governor’s race, on the other hand, has been extremely quiet. The Republican National Committee and conservative PACs apparently don’t believe Geoff Diehl has any chance at defeating Attorney General Maura Healey, based on the lack of ads attacking the liberal Democrat.
I’ve stated it before in this space: Republicans have no one to blame but themselves for their slim chance of defeating Healey. Diehl, like Bolduc, is a Trump loyalist and that makes him unelectable in the general election.
Things would have certainly been different had Republicans elected Chris Doughty last month. There’s no question the Wrentham businessman would have run ads attacking Healey, even if he had to pay for them out of his own pocket, something he did in the primary. I believe he had a legitimate shot of winning.
Doughty’s loss has resulted in fewer political ads. I guess that’s a good thing.