Lieutenant Governor Patty Judge is lashing out at what she calls a "shadowy" group running radio and television ads critical of Governor Culver. The group, which calls itself the Iowa Future Fund, is airing commercials which lambaste Culver on a variety of fronts, including his support of legislation that would give Microsoft tax breaks if the computer giant builds a new facility in Iowa.
"We are really not happy with that commercial and I’ll tell you why," Judge said Monday afternoon during a news conference. "It is just blatantly inaccurate to start with."
The ad accuses Culver, a Democrat, of overseeing a dramatic increase in taxes and state spending during his first year in office. According to Judge, the group’s ad "represents the worst" in politics.
"We have researched and we cannot find the Iowa Futures Fund. It appears from our research that this is one more of those shadowy, out-of-state deals where money is coming into Iowa from the east coast to try to represent something that isn’t very factual about our governor," Judge said.
The Iowa Future Fund has not filed financial documents with either state or national groups which oversee spending on political ads and while the group sent an email to news organizations Monday morning touting its ad, there was no contact person listed.