Say what you want about negative campaigning, but one tenant is more important than any other; don't edit a video to make your opponent look worse. Not only is it ethically wrong, but you'll probably get caught eventually. In this case, New Yorkers for Growth, a sort of mini Club for Growth in New York, has been caught editing a video of Sen. Oppenheimer as part of their attacks against the Senator in support of slumlord conservative candidate Bob Cohen.
The right-leaning New Yorkers For Growth group has already endorsed Cohen, pointing to a rather painful video that shows Oppenheimer -- chair of the Senate Education Committee -- struggling to answer questions from GOP Sen. John Flanagan about school funding.
However, a fuller version of the video...and a transcript of her exchange with Flanagan we obtained, which has the cut portions of their testimony highlighted in yellow, appears to show that the tape was edited to make Oppenheimer look, well, just plain bad.
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This is a great catch by Celeste and the Daily News. The original ad, which can be found here makes it look like Senator Oppenheimer can't answer basic questions about the budget and has to rely on his staffer for all of the information. But the real video shows the Senator and her opponent, Senator Flanagan, having a pretty free-flowing and normal discussion on this subject with Senator Oppenheimer astutely answering most of Flanagan's questions. That video (which starting at around 1:16:00 gets to the good stuff) makes this point very clear.
And even better, there's a transcript that matches up to the alleged video and shows the actual answers to the questions!
Look, maybe NY Club for Growth doesn't like the substance of what Senator Oppenheimer was saying. And they're more than welcome to push against her on the substance of the issues. But when a group starts to edit videos down to make an individual look bad, they're playing a disingenuous game. It shows that they're bankrupt on ideas and stuck with just making stuff up to make their opponents look bad. And that's a game that the media and the blogosphere will catch them on every time.
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