In the midst of an ongoing television campaigning controversy, Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle released a new ad Wednesday promoting at-home health care to the state's senior citizens.
Doyle's 30-second television spot addresses the Family Care program. The commercial says the program will "help seniors get what they need in their homes," said Anne Lupardus, deputy press secretary to the Doyle campaign.
According to Lupardus, seniors who don't require a full-time nursing home could receive health care in their homes with state dollars that would have been otherwise spent on their care in a nursing home.
"It lets seniors stay in their homes, and it saves the taxpayers money," Doyle says in the new ad.
Gubernatorial candidate U.S. Rep. Mark Green, R-Wis., has been quick to criticize the new TV spot.
"Jim Doyle's answer to high health-care costs is more government control over people's health-care decisions," Green said in a release.
Green's current plan for lowering health-care costs includes offering incentives for long-term care insurance companies, which he says will save taxpayers dollars down the road because they will rely less on government support.
"No matter what Jim Doyle says on TV, it will not change his failed four years on health care," he added.
As Doyle's health care-oriented ad begins circulating throughout the state, a Green Bay television station has decided to re-air a controversial campaign commercial that raises ethical concerns about the Doyle administration.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, WBAY-TV will air an ad sponsored by the Michigan-based group All Children Matter, an advocacy group for the school choice program.
The ad does not promote vouchers, but rather associates Doyle Chief of Staff Susan Goodwin with former state procurement official Georgia Thompson, who was sentenced to prison last month for illegally swaying a state contract to Adelman Travel Group.
The station pulled the ad shortly after Goodwin accused All Children Matter of defamation, hiring Madison attorney Lester Pines to challenge the ad. Following a letter from Pines to All Children Matter, the group agreed to pull the ad and replace it with another, which began airing Tuesday.
Lupardus called the ad "full of deliberate distortions" and said it "has no place on the air because it uses lies with clear intent to smear the governor."
But WBAY-TV general manager Don Carmichael offered a different perspective, telling the Journal Sentinel the station decided the ad is "fair comment" on political issues, and not defamatory.
Green campaign spokesperson Luke Punzenberger said the All Children Matter group is independent of the campaign.
"We offered a clean campaign pledge and [Doyle] refused to sign," he added.
Punzenberger said the Green campaign would have punished groups that use defamatory ads had Doyle signed the pledge.
