Incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Begich's recent controversial television ad has drawn new scorn from a pair of sources: the nonpartisan fact-checking outlet PolitiFact and the popular television show hosted by Jon Stewart, "The Daily Show."
In a segment Thursday night, Stewart lambasted the spot from Begich, which was released last week and features a retired Anchorage Police Department officer attacking Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dan Sullivan, a former state attorney general.
The officer said Sullivan had given light sentences to sex offenders, including one who is charged with killing a couple and sexually assaulting two relatives. But the suspect's flawed plea agreement cited by Begich's campaign has been blamed on a separate department outside Sullivan's control, and was one of thousands of agreements reviewed by prosecutors each year.
PolitiFact gave the ad a "pants on fire" rating earlier this week. In an interview with a public radio station in Sitka published Friday, Begich defended the spot, saying it's important that Sullivan's record "be out there, and people know what it is."
Stewart, starting at about the 5:20 mark in the video above, showed a clip of the ad, then cowered behind his desk and proclaimed, jokingly, that "Mark Begich's opponent Dan Sullivan is like a one-man 'Law and Order: SUV' plot generator."
(He subsequently clarified that he meant to refer to the television show "Law and Order: SVU.")
Stewart then went on to show a recent ad from Sullivan that features the candidate shooting a television set, and ended the segment by saying: "That's your choice, Alaska.
"You can vote for a guy who lies in his campaign ads," Stewart says. "Or his opponent, the weird guy down at the edge of town who shoots his appliances when they displease him."
"Toaster…" Stewart adds, then aims his fingers towards the camera, and fires.
Dueling endorsements
Alaska's rival U.S. Senate campaigns touted competing endorsements this week, with a coalition of Southwest Alaska Native tribal groups backing incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Begich, and an oil, gas and mining trade group endorsing Republican candidate Dan Sullivan.
The Alaska Support Industry Alliance, which says it has 500 member companies representing 30,000 employees in the state, said in a prepared statement Friday that it was endorsing Sullivan because his "efforts to fight federal overreach give us confidence that he will continue to fight for the best interests of Alaska."
The group does not typically endorse candidates, its communications director said.
Meanwhile, the United Tribes of Bristol Bay endorsed Begich last week. It's a consortium of 12 local tribal and village councils in Southwest Alaska opposed to large-scale mining projects like the proposed Pebble mine -- a project that Begich also opposes.
In a prepared statement, the group's president, Robert Heyano, was quoted as saying that Begich "has a solid record supporting Alaska Native interests."
"He has a demonstrated commitment to protecting Alaska Native subsistence ways of life in addition to assisting our communities with the myriad issues like economic development, public safety, and tribal self-determination," Heyano's statement said.