Behind the Ad: Terry McAuliffe on natural gas royalties

By Richard K. Barry

(Another in our extensive Behind the Ad series.)

Who: The Terry McAuliffe (D) campaign for governor

Where: Virginia

What's going on: As The Washington Post describes it, the ad is built around a controversy to do with "how - and whether - landowners should be paid royalties by natural gas companies who extract coal-bed methane from their land."

 McAuliffe's Republican opponent in the governor's race, Ken Cuccinelli, gets drawn into this because a federal judge expressed strong concern "at the advice and assistance an assistant attorney general from Cuccinelli’s office (when he was AG) was giving to two energy companies embroiled in a lawsuit."

The bottom line claim is that area residents are saying they are not seeing any money from royalties and Cuccinelli's office was giving information to the energy companies that was used to fight the claims of locals. And then, the ad says, Cuccinelli got $100,000 from said energy companies for his governor's campaign.

And here's a shocking retort from the Cuccinelli campaign:

Cuccinelli’s campaign said McAuliffe had decided to launch the first negative ad of their duel to distract from his own shortcomings.

“If Virginians want a governor who’s willing to use scare tactics to get elected, Terry McAuliffe is their candidate,” said Cuccinelli spokeswoman Anna Nix. “It’s notable that his campaign, with no positive economic message to run on, has decided to go up with negative, misleading TV ads. With regard to the methane case, McAuliffe is deliberately trying to distort the facts in a shameless attempt to drum up votes.”

You will be shocked to learn that Cuccinelli's team is denying any impropriety.

When will they learn that if they haven't got anything nice to say, they shouldn't say anything at all?

I have no idea if this issues resonates in Virginia.

     

(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)