Horner goes negative, somewhat, in newest TV ad

Two months ago, gubernatorial candidate Tom Horner decried negative advertisements by his opponents. Now, with just over a week ’til election day, the Independence Party candidate goes negative, somewhat, in his new ad — depicting an immovable elephant’s backside as Republican Tom Emmer and a donkey as DFLer Mark Dayton.

“A lot of Minnesotans fear living with Republican Tom Emmer because he won’t move from the extreme political positions that threaten our state’s future,” the ad’s narrator states atop video of a hulking elephant in a family’s kitchen. “And Democrat Mark Dayton has such a poor history of doing his own job. How is he going to create jobs for Minnesota?”

Another new ad shows longtime Republican Tommy Merickel and Democrat Joan Niemiec, a former Minneapolis city council member, as they put out lawn signs showing their support not for their party’s endorsed candidate, but for Horner. (On a similiar theme, the state GOP gave Horner fodder he could’ve used had he really wanted to go negative: When 13 former Republican legislators announced they’d be backing IP candidate Horner, GOP chair Tony Sutton implied they were traitors: “There’s a special place in hell for these quislings,” he said, using a term named after Nazi sympathizer Vidkun Quisling.)

Finally, Horner’s campaign has released statewide radio trumpeting recent endorsements from papers from around the state. But the featured endorsements only represent two companies, the Star Tribune and Forum Communications, which has a history of dictating which candidates its papers are to endorse from the home office in Fargo.