AD CHECK

By JASON ROSENBAUM of the Tribune’s staff

Published Thursday, June 12, 2008

Sorting fact from fiction can be difficult when it comes to political ads. Ad Check will try to shed extra light on the candidates’ messages.

State Treasurer Sarah Steelman is running the following attacking U.S. Rep. Kenny Hulshof, R-Columbia:

Narrator: A conservative group rates Congressman Hulshof’s big spending record in Washington "unfriendly to taxpayers." He’s voted for 11,000 wasteful earmarks, including the "Bridge to Nowhere." Conservative groups give him a failing grade on wasteful spending.

Now, Congressman Hulshof wants to take his wasteful spending record to the governor’s office.

Sarah Steelman. A conservative state treasurer. A record of standing firm against wasteful spending, against high taxes, against illegal immigration.

Sarah Steelman. Guts. Missouri experience.

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Steelman’s ad is the first attack on her adversary in the Republican primary race to replace Gov. Matt Blunt. The ad criticizes Hulshof’s experience as a U.S. congressman, a strategy the Steelman camp has used for months.

The "conservative groups" Steelman cites are Citizens Against Government Waste and the Club for Growth, which rate U.S. representatives and senators on their votes on bills and amendments. Both groups gave Hulshof low marks in past surveys: CAGW gave Hulshof a 27 percent rating in 2007, and the Club for Growth gave Hulshof a 22 percent rating in 2007.

The "Bridge to Nowhere" cited in the ad was an appropriation worth more than $200 million in a 2005 transportation bill that would have paid to connect a city in Alaska to a largely uninhabited island.

The Alaskan project drew opposition from groups such as CAGW that cited it as a prime example of wasteful spending. The plan to build the bridge was later quashed. Hulshof, along with the other eight House members from Missouri, voted for a conference committee report on the transportation bill. Only eight members of the House voted against the conference committee report.

Steelman cites a Tribune editorial in May that praised her for blocking low-interest loans to ethanol plants whose investors are involved in politics.

But that appears to be an example of halting a perceived conflict of interest rather than a demonstration of Steelman’s aversion to wasteful spending. Steelman wrote to a state representative and a former agriculture director that she supported allocating the low-interest loans as long as political figures or their family members give up their holdings.

"She is not opposed to helping out family farmers, but she is opposed to allowing elected officials to profit from tax credits that they vote on and implement," Steelman spokesman Spence Jackson said. "That’s where she has a problem. And that’s what we deem to be wasteful spending."

Opponents of Steelman’s decision not to allocate the ethanol-plant loans contend the first-term state treasurer is not consistent because lawyers and doctors in the General Assembly vote on measures that affect them financially.

Hulshof has said he supports allocating the low-interest ethanol loans as long as investments from political figures are disclosed.

Reach Jason Rosenbaum at (573) 815-1724 or jrosenbaum@tribmail.com.