Is It Wrong to Vote for a Candidate Based on the Negative Ads of Their Opponent?

In Illinois Barack Obama pretty much is a lock to win its Electoral votes. No matter your political leanings, this leads to a little bit nicer TV, although there are enough other, well-funded ads to fill the TV space at times. On my front, though, it’s not about the TV ads that is driving me crazy, it’s about my State Representative race between Stephanie Kifowit versus Pat Fee. My problem – There are things I like about both candidates with the conservative in me liking the job Pat Fee has been doing, but the liberal side in me also sees some benefits to Stephanie and her track record as an Aldermwoman where I live.  It’s one of those cases where if you molded the two candidates together you would have my perfect representative. The problem is Stephanie’s ad campaign that is mostly negative flyers littering my mailbox seemingly every day with some of the worst Photoshop I have ever seen. It’s a campaign based on bashing of Fee, pandering to the typical “If you are a senior, Pat Fee will take away your money” message and superimposing Pat Fee’s head on another body, in a pose to make her look evil. Combine that with the fact that Kifowit also seems to be tightly tied in with the ultimate Superpower in Illinois, Michael Madigan, and the general Democrat in me is leaning to the dark side. Not that Pat Fee hasn’t run some ads with a negative message of her own, they just aren’t as pandering, nor as misleading, as the Kifowit mailers.

A Kifowit representative came to my door the other day (Hell, it might have been Stephanie herself), but I didn’t have time for her because Milo was barking his head off, and I had pork chops on the grill. The more I thought about it, though, I wish I had a minute to find out if it was her. Why? Because I would have liked to have told her that if she lost by one vote, that vote mostly likely was mine. In the end it wouldn’t be based on her track record, nor the job I thought she would do. Nope, at this point it is mostly being based on the fact that her ad campaign is exactly what I find wrong with politics today. And so I plight: Is it wrong to vote for a candidate based on the negative ads of their opponent?

That’s it for this plight! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!