Thelma Drake Advertisement

I haven't paid much attention to the Congressional race for Virginia's 2nd district between incumbent R-Thelma Drake versus D-Phil Kellam. I've read blips on other blogs and an occassional article in the paper. It's not my district and I really don't care. That said, I've recently been working on a project in Yorktown, VA. During my hotel stay, this ad came across the TV screen more than once:

I take issue with two facets of the ad. First, the broad sweeping claim that "liberals" are fighting to give illegal immigrants gov't handouts like welfare, free health care, and social security. Who is fighting for this? Who gets free health care? I didn't know we had free health care in this country to begin with. The ad is attacking a ficticious entity only known as "liberals".

Second, the ad makes no refrence to her Republican party. It doesn't have to, but it makes the claim she is "independent". An attempt to distance herself from the flailing GOP machine? Pretty hard to be independent when you're voting with president Bush 89% of the time and voting the GOP party line 98% of the time. I'm having a hard time seeing the independence.

As stated, I'm not deeply entrenched in this election and don't really care. That ad struck a real shord with me. What it did was make me look into Phil Kellam and see what kind of candidate he is. Now I'm just curious to see who wins this race.