Cook: When Did Pat Hays Attack French Hill?

This week, Second District GOP Congressional candidate French Hill hit the panic button, in my estimation.

On Tuesday, Hill began running a negative ad against his Democratic opponent, Pat Hays, claiming that Hays had falsely attacked him. In the ad, Hill talks directly to the camera and says the following: “Patrick Henry Hays is attacking me falsely to hide his own failed record. Here’s the truth.” The ad then cuts to an announcer who goes after Hays’ public record.

Here’s the problem with the ad – nobody seems to know what French Hill is talking about.

So far, neither Pat Hays Congressional campaign nor any outside groups have attacked Hill on television or radio. This cycle, Hays’ TV ads have been roundly praised for being positive and catchy and of the four TV spots Hays has run, none have been negative. It’s been a very tame and civil race so far.

So what is the Hill camp complaining about?

I’ve scoured back through the Hays press releases and all I can find is a challenge to French Hill to reject Congressional perks and a response to a misrepresentation of Hays’ position on the Keystone XL Pipeline. In that press release, Hays’ campaign manager says Hill is “out of touch” for bringing in a GOP Congressman from California, new House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, to promote the Keystone project (which Hays endorses).

Hardly “attacking Hill falsely.”

What I think happened is Hill’s campaign recently got some bad poll numbers showing them trailing Hays and this is their response. But Hill’s campaign didn’t want to be accused of going negative first, so they likely have contorted some statement that was slightly critical of Hill and decided to use that as an excuse to go negative.

In fact when you watch the ad, I’m of the opinion that Hill’s portion of the ad was probably filmed weeks ago and was likely sitting on a computer somewhere waiting to be used.

It’s a common tactic for major campaigns to film responses to anticipate attacks so that once the opposition attacks they’re not scrambling to respond. Hill’s statements spoken directly on camera are so general in nature that they could be used in almost any response TV ad.

Hays’ campaign manager, David Furr, sent a mass email on Tuesday saying French Hill is lying:

“Have you turned on your TV lately? If so, maybe you’ve seen French Hill’s latest ad, which not only attacks Mayor Hays and his record, but claims that we attacked Hill first. Now, I’ve got a good idea of what this campaign is doing, and I know we haven’t run any ads attacking French Hill. We can’t let Hill’s lies stand.”

Hill’s campaign manager Jack Sisson offered his comments over the issue, which I’ll provide in their entirety:

“Patrick Henry Hays has held press conferences attacking French, issued statements attacking French and even sent staff armed with cameras into our office to attack French, the notion that 26-year, career politician Pat Hays and his allies Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama are running a positive campaign is simply not true.”

Hill and Hays have history together and best I can tell, it’s been largely positive.

Ironically, in late 2012, when French Hill was President of Fifty for the Future, he presented Pat Hays with the William F. Rector Award for Distinguished Civic Achievement and praised his service as North Little Rock mayor.

Three weeks ago, I wrote a story centering around the fact that French Hill may have made a strategic blunder by allowing Hays to outspend him on television in the month of August by a 3-to-1 margin.

With French Hill firing the first shot, in my opinion, it appears he is trying to fix his August blunder.