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Illinois Green Party |
| Estabrook Launches TV Ad Campaign |
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ESTABROOK FOR CONGRESS LAUNCHES TV AD CAMPAIGN Contact: A decidedly different Congressional campaign has introduced television advertisements that make a virtue of its low-budget approach to politics. Carl Estabrook unveiled four commercials this week that skewer the incumbent Congressman for taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from corporate political action committees (PACs). Estabrook is the Green Party candidate for Congress in the Illinois 15th District. Estabrook and other Greens accept no corporate PAC contributions. "Tim Johnson's issue positions have everything to do with who his corporate backers are," Estabrook charged in a press release. "With contributions pouring in from the likes of agribusiness, big tobacco, nuclear power and telecommunications giants, Tim's votes make a whole lot of sense. Just not for ordinary folks." Fifteen- and thirty-second Estabrook commercials feature a highly animated "Captain Corporate America," who "showers wads of campaign cash on Capitol Hill to buy the laws he likes." A cartoon graphic of the Captain and Johnson morphs into an actual photograph of the pair, taken during an area parade. "That picture is worth thousands of words in itself," Estabrook said. "All in all it's a clever ad, making a very serious point -- politics need to be about one-person-one-vote, not one-dollar-one-vote." Another 30-second Estabrook ad scrolls the names of dozens of Johnson's corporate contributors, as a narrator intones, "To buy prime time exposure, Tim Johnson, the Republican incumbent, has raked in over a quarter-million dollars from big-name PACs all over the country. The Estabrook campaign hasn't got a dime in corporate PAC money, and we don't want any. Carl Estabrook and the Greens won't be bought." Among the PACs listed are those of agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland, telephone conglomerate SBC Communications, nuclear plant owner Exelon Energy, cigarette manufacturers Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds, and a host of out-of-district agricultural industry groups like the Western Peanut Growers Association and Georgia Peach. "The ad's tag line says it all," Estabrook said. "'The best democracy money can buy isn't good enough.'" Information about the contributions came from the Federal Election Commission's website (www.fec.gov) and from www.opensecrets.org, a watchdog site maintained by the non-governmental Center for Responsive Politics. A fourth advertisement features a song by Urbana folk singer Paul Kotheimer, "Money's All Gone." "Paul's song points up a reality of modern life for many Americans," Estabrook said. "As the lyrics say, 'Fifteen pennies out of every single dollar goes for corporate welfare, third world warfare. The rich are getting richer and my money's all gone.'" As the song plays, scrolling text displays some of our society's most serious problems -- among them corporate corruption, sky-rocketing deficits, rising health care costs, disappearing pensions and a demand for war without end -- and asks "Is this the way we want to live? The world we want for our children?" It concludes, "This November, cast a vote for non-violence, social justice, grassroots democracy, [and] ecological wisdom. Support the Green Party. Send Carl Estabrook to Congress." An instrumental segment from the same song serves as background for the other Estabrook commercials. The ads are expected to run several dozen times on at least two area television stations. "We'd love to get them out to more people, but television advertising is extremely expensive -- up to several thousand dollars per ad on some stations. We're certainly not the first to point out, as we do in our commercials, that traditional politicians like the incumbent Congressman are helping perpetuate an extremely unfair system, by raking in corporate donations to fund their big-budget campaigns. We're in this race to provide voters with an alternative to that." The Estabrook ads may also be viewed on the campaign's website -- <www.carlforcongress.org> -- where they are available in streaming and down-loadable formats.
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