On the Campaign Trail with Ed Tibbetts

Due to some technical difficulties, I couldn’t post this new Barack Obama campaign ad earlier this week, but here it is now.

The ad is running in 18 states, including Iowa.

The Iowa Progress Project is after Gov. Chet Culver again. The group, whose spokesman is a Republican political consultant, released this radio ad today criticizing Culver for signing a tax break package for Microsoft.

The company is bringing a data center to central Iowa.

The ad’s message is that while Iowans are struggling with high gasoline prices, the world’s richest man gets a bunch of tax breaks.

What the ad doesn’t mention is that Republicans as well as Democrats overwhelmingly approved of the package in the state legislature.

You can hear the ad here.

Jeff Giertz, the spokesman for U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, says he’s taking a leave of absence for a few months to go work for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in Alaska.

That Braley would let him go may say something about how competitively he sees state Sen. David Hartsuch’s challenge. Giertz was a familiar face in the 2006 campaign against Mike Whalen.

Iowa’s 1st District is on the Democrats’ safe list, this isn’t all that surprising. Hartsuch also filed 2nd Quarter financials that showed him raising $16,655 for the year, far short of the $640,000 Braley raised through mid-May.

Republican congressional hopeful David Hartsuch has filed his 2nd Quarter financial report. Between mid-May and the end of June, he raised $10,841. That brings him to $16,655 for the first half of the year.

That figure is a far cry from the $1 million his campaign said not long ago that it was planning on raising for the campaign cycle. He reported $12,664 in the bank.

You can find his full report here.

Hartsuch is running against Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, who raised $640,000 through mid-May. He had $335,000 in the bank.

Earlier this week, John McCain’s campaign criticized Barack Obama for voting for a budget measure they claimed would raise taxes on people making as little as $32,000.

McCain’s Iowa chairman, Dave Roederer, was in Davenport to push the message along with a rollout of business supporters.

Well now, FactCheck.org, a non-partisan group at the University of Pennsylvania, says the McCain folks got it all wrong.

You can read their analysis here.