With the primary election a week away Democratic mayoral candidate and Metro Councilman Jim King, D-10, has turned up the heat and launched another attack ad slamming businessman Greg Fischer. The 30-second commercial says Fischer supports tolling the existing downtown bridges, will spend millions on a new bureaucracy and that the candidate lacks basic knowledge of Metro government finances.
h/t The ‘Ville Voice:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__rRcTk5sR8[/youtube]
“For all of Greg Fischer’s expensive ideas The Courier-Journal reported that when asked, he couldn’t even say what the size of Louisville’s budget was. It’s one thing to run for office, it’s another thing to lead. Greg Fischer: tolls on bridges, more bureaucracy, not ready to lead.”
Using cash register sound effects to push home the point, the commercial grabs hold to the anti-tolling sentiment surrounding the $4.1 billion Ohio Rive Bridges Project. As LEO Weekly’s Jonathan Meador pointed out earlier today, “Fischer, supports the unpopular method of tolling existing bridges as a means to pay for the behemoth public works project.”
Among the Democratic candidates, King sits in the middle of the street by supporting the project, but being firmly against tolling.
Earlier in the campaign, the public also got a preview of this advertisement’s claims that Fischer doesn’t know much about Metro government’s budget. In a recent editorial, Courier-Journal columnist John David Dyche sliced Fischer, saying the Democratic front-runner lacks substance and was unable to answer King’s question about the amount of money in city’s budget and rainy day fund at a recent mayoral forum.
From Dyche:
When rival Jim King asked Fischer the amount of the annual general fund budget and rainy day fund, Fischer failed to respond. Regardless of any explanation he now offers, voters must assume that the soporific Fischer simply did not know that the general fund is about $500 million and the rainy day fund is about $65 million.
Sometimes such “gotcha” questions are unfair, but this one was about a fundamental fact that a would-be mayor should have at his fingertips. This is especially true when that candidate has been running longer than anyone and boasts of his economic expertise.
Fischer’s silence also points up a significant contrast with King. Both have impressive business backgrounds, but King has also spent countless hours in committee meetings mastering the minutiae of Metro money matters. While King has helped write several city budgets, it seems that Fisher may not have even seen one.
After the first attack was launched, Fischer responded even though he initially told the media that he wouldn’t “stoop to Jim King’s level.” In the response, Fischer took some passive-aggressive small jabs at King without refuting the original commercials accusations. Instead, Fischer claimed only that King was lying to voters again, suggesting that the former council president has misled them before.