Lugar responds to Mourdock criticism with new TV ad

By Lesley Weidenbener
The Statehouse File

INDIANAPOLIS – Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., has launched new television and radio ads to combat growing criticism that he doesn’t live in a home in Indiana and stays in hotel rooms when he visits the state.

The TV commercial shows what appears to be mud splattering onto the screen with a voice over that says, “Whoa. Is that mud? Really.”

“Richard Mourdock and his D.C. cronies are attacking Senator Lugar again?” the announcer says as more mud splashes on the screen. “Throwing more mud? More negative ads? More juvenile cartoons?”

The ad comes just days after Mourdock, the state treasurer and Lugar’s GOP primary opponent, talked to reporters in front of an Indianapolis home that Lugar sold in 1977 but still uses as his address for voting. Lugar has said repeatedly that he owns a farm in Indiana but lives with his wife in Virginia, close to Washington D.C. where he spends much of his time as a senator.

Mourdock called on Lugar to “move back to Indiana.”

“Thirty-six years is a long time and, sadly, Sen. Lugar has become out of touch with Hoosier Republicans,” Mourdock told supporters in an email.

Democrats are hounding Lugar on the issue as well. On Tuesday, the Indiana Democratic Party said that the farm is “legally headquarters at Lugar’s home” in Virginia and the senator’s office is listed as the address for the farm’s registered agent.

“The one thing Sen. Lugar has maintained in Indiana as he kept his residency here for ‘political purposes’ was this farm,” said Indiana Democratic Party Chairman Dan Parker. “However, the farm appears to have made the move to Virginia as well.”

The Lugar campaign’s political director, David Willkie, said the senator has worked to maintain a positive campaign message about jobs and the economy but that Lugar will defend himself.

Willkie called Mourdock’s campaign moves “nothing but silly season antics.”

“We are more than ready and willing to deal with our opponent’s deceptive and negative attacks,” Willkie said.

And Lugar’s ad throws out some attacks of its own. Among them, a accusation that Mourdock has failed to show up consistently for his job as state treasurer, a charge first leveled by the Indiana-based newsletter Howey Politics.

Lugar also released an ad Tuesday about his “fight for a balanced federal budget.”

Lesley Weidenbener is managing editor of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.