Alabama Republican Party Chairman Bill Armistead on Tuesday said a Fayetteville, Arkansas-based liberal political committee called the Southern Progress Action Fund is spending more than a hundred thousand dollars to air dishonest negative ads against Republican legislative candidates in Alabama but refuses to publicly reveal its funding sources.
The ads began airing in the Montgomery and Huntsville media markets on Tuesday, and the amount of the buy was culled from advertising logs at the television stations running them. They are scheduled to continue through Election Day on November 4.
“The Southern Progress Action Fund is a cloak-and-dagger group that is purposely hiding its contributors from the media and voters in Alabama,” Armistead said. “Much of the content of the ads is outrageous, offensive, and untrue and attacks our conservative Republican legislative candidates with no accountability in return for those funding them. This out-of-state group is flagrantly avoiding Alabama’s campaign finance laws and trying to mislead Alabama voters by hiding its donors with sleight-of-hand tactics.”
“These dishonest tactics may work elsewhere, but I believe the people of Alabama will recognize the Southern Progress Action Fund as a group of liberals being funded by liberals to elect liberals,” Armistead continued. “The group’s website lists ultra-liberals like Howard Dean, a former chairman of the National Democrat Party, and former California Gov. Gray Davis among its founders and leaders, which is all of the evidence you need to know that it opposes the conservative beliefs and values that most Alabamians hold.”
According to a story that ran in Bloomberg news, the Southern Progress Action Fund was purposely created in a manner that does not require it to publicly report its contributors. A related fund, the Southern Progress Fund, does report its contributions to the Internal Revenue Service. [Source: http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-08-05/former-mississippi-governor-begins-new-effort-to-elect-southern-democrats/]
By Bill Armistead, Chairman of the Alabama Republican Party
