Dean Attacked on Tax Policy in Commercial

A conservative political group launched an ad in New Hampshire and Iowa on Thursday, arguing that Democrat Howard Dean would raise taxes and comparing the front-runner to losing presidential candidates George S. McGovern and Michael S. Dukakis.

The Dean campaign immediately responded to the Club for Growth’s commercial, saying it would broadcast its own ad this weekend countering the criticism. The Dean spot, which will air in the early voting states, accuses President Bush of “hiding behind negative ads” by Republican groups and contends the ads falsely attack Dean.

The Club for Growth commercial compares the former Vermont governor to McGovern, Dukakis and Walter F. Mondale, three unsuccessful Democratic nominees whom the group argues supported “huge tax increases.”

“Howard Dean says he’ll raise taxes on the average family by more than $1,900 a year. Dean says he’ll raise income taxes, marriage taxes, capital gains taxes, dividend taxes, even bring back the death tax,” an announcer says. “Will Howard Dean ever learn?”

The ad will run for at least two weeks in Des Moines and Manchester, N.H., at a cost of about $100,000.

“He’s become the symbol of the anti-Bush tax cut movement in the Democratic Party,” said Stephen Moore, president of Club for Growth, which was founded in 1999 to help elect fiscal conservatives. “He’s just going to get absolutely crucified on this issue.”

Dean has called for rolling back Bush’s tax cuts and using the money to provide health care and to relieve the pressure on state and local taxes. Dean has not indicated he would raise taxes beyond their previous levels.

Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi called the ad “absolutely wrong” and a “bald-faced lie” because it characterizes Dean as a tax-and-spend Democrat.

“It’s starting to look pretty clear that they’ve become increasingly concerned by the grass-roots movement we have created,” Trippi said in a conference call with reporters.

He argued that Dean is seeking fiscal responsibility, and repeal of the tax cuts is necessary because they “threaten this country’s economic well-being.”

Dean is the only candidate mentioned in the ad. Among the major candidates, rival Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) also favors repealing all of Bush’s tax cuts, while reintroducing some later. Wesley Clark, John Edwards, and Sens. John F. Kerry and Joe Lieberman want to roll back the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

Also Thursday, Gephardt began airing his first television ad in South Carolina, using a 30-second biographical commercial that has run in Iowa and New Hampshire. The campaign is spending about $70,000 to air the ad through Wednesday. He has been using radio ads for more than a month in South Carolina, which will open the presidential primary season in the South on Feb. 3.

Iowa holds its caucuses Jan. 19 and New Hampshire’s primary is Jan. 27.

A study released Thursday by the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin at Madison found that Democratic presidential candidates have run more than three times as many spots in Iowa than they have in New Hampshire media markets.