Michigan's gubernatorial candidates had spent a combined $6.7 million on television ads as of Friday, but the biggest complaints were coming over nearly $4 million in attack ads run by independent groups.
The tenor of the governor's race was growing increasingly negative as the five Republican and two Democratic candidates headed into the final weekend before Tuesday's primary election.
Republican Rick Snyder, who led all the candidates by spending $2.3 million on ads, complained Friday that the group Michigan Taxpayer Alert was airing a television ad in the Detroit area "full of malicious lies and distortions."
The ad says "Snyder's company" was investigated for accounting fraud and that he was "sued for insider trading."
The Snyder campaign responded that the Ann Arbor businessman had left his position as Gateway Inc. president years before there were any question over misstated earnings, and said Snyder was not named as a party in the stipulation that settled the shareholder suit.
In response to that ad, Snyder began airing his own campaign ad Friday blasting GOP opponent Mike Cox, whom he accuses of being behind the negative attack.
"Cox and his cronies can run all the false negative ads they want, but he has never created a single job," an announcer in the Snyder ad says before adding, "Cox, a desperate career politician."
Cox campaign manager Stu Sandler Snyder is "a guy who's talking about negative attack ads in a negative attack ad." He added, "It's actually pretty ludicrous."
The same ad that went after Snyder also was full of untrue accusations about U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra. The Holland congressman's campaign had slammed Cox earlier Friday for using improperly obtained footage of a video recorded during a Michigan Association of Home Builders meeting with Hoekstra to claim in an ad that Hoekstra supports raising the sales tax on services.
"This is a very disappointing development particularly as it comes so late in a tight election campaign when there is so little time to respond to misleading advertising," said MAHB CEO Bob Filka, whose organization and political action committee have not endorsed in the race. "We hope Mr. Cox would do the honorable thing and withdraw this misleading advertisement."
Sandler said MAHB's own public relations manager put the footage up on YouTube, and that the ad was accurate and wouldn't be pulled.
The Michigan Taxpayer Alert ad repeats a nearly identical accusation against Hoekstra, inaccurately noting that Hoekstra "supports Jennifer Granholm's plans for a new tax on services and to allow higher property taxes."
What Hoekstra told the MAHB was that he wanted to get rid of the Michigan Business Tax, lower the income tax and "do something with the sales tax." He has said in other conversations that he would consider extending the sales tax to more services, but only if the change was coupled with other tax cuts.
Records of television ad buys compiled by the nonpartisan Michigan Campaign Finance Network shows that Cox has spent the second-highest amount on ads, $1.9 million, while Hoekstra has spent about a fourth of that. Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard, another Republican in the race, has spent nearly $1 million, while GOP state Rep. Tom George has spent just over $17,000.
Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero was the only candidate who avoided spending money on campaign ads, but his efforts to win the Democratic primary were assisted by $1.8 million in ads sponsored by the Genesee County Democratic Party and paid for by Bernero's union supporters.
A group called Advance Michigan Now that supports Bernero's Democratic rival, House Speaker Andy Dillon, has spent $430,000 on "issue ads" promoting Dillon, and the Northern Michigan Education Fund has spent $271,000 to do the same. Dillon's campaign had spent $902,000 on its own ads.
In other spending:
--The Michigan Chamber of Commerce, which has endorsed Cox, spent $221,000 on ads supporting him.
--The Foundation for a Secure and Prosperous America had spent $120,000 to oppose Cox.
--Americans for Job Security, a Virginia-based free-market group that the Michigan Campaign Finance Network says appears to time its ads to run concurrently with Cox's, has spent $753,000 on anti-Hoekstra ads.
--Michigan Business United, which opposes Hoekstra and supports Cox, has spent $290,000 on ads.