Anti-Reid ads draw criticism

Nevada's largest private employer is lashing back at attack ads aimed at linking Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to alleged exploitative labor practices in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

Lawyers for resort giant MGM Mirage say claims in the ads are "false, offensive and defamatory" and called on the creators to retract the commercials, posted online at www.exposeharry.com and scheduled to run on television this week in Las Vegas.

Backers of the anti-Reid ads, a group that includes a consultant who crafted the "Willie Horton" ad during the 1988 presidential campaign of Democrat Michael Dukakis, say they aren't backing down.

They say linking Reid to exploitative labor allegations in the U.A.E. is fair because MGM Mirage CEO Jim Murren cut a campaign commercial supporting Reid and the company's $8.5 billion CityCenter project is co-owned with Dubai World, a private development arm of the government of Dubai in the U.A.E.

Dubai has been accused of withholding passports and using the threat of debtors' prison to coerce laborers to live in substandard conditions and work for extremely low wages.

"They brought Murren into the campaign, we didn't," said Floyd Brown, the maker of the anti-Reid and Horton ads. "But once they brought him into the campaign, we are more than happy to discuss it."

Brown made the anti-Reid ad on behalf of the Republican Majority Campaign, a group based in Ramona, Calif., that raised more than $4 million during the 2008 campaign cycle.

The group is led by Gary Kreep, a consultant who has generated controversy for promoting the unsubstantiated and widely discredited suggestion President Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States and is ineligible to hold office.

Alan Feldman, a spokesman for MGM Mirage, said the labor ad and a companion ad criticizing the company for resisting entreaties from Nevada's struggling state government to pay more to cover the cost of gambling regulation are riddled with inaccuracies.

He said that if the Republican Majority Campaign had done more research in Nevada, it would have known that gambling taxes cover 23 percent of the state's general fund and that licensing investigations are paid for through fees on the people and companies seeking the license -- contrary to a claim in one of the ads.

"These are folks from outside the state who clearly know nothing about what is going on here," Feldman said.

The ads themselves are disjointed and appear aimed more at juxtaposing Reid's name and image with the broadest and most sensational claims about alleged cruel business practices in Dubai under the leadership of ruler Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum than at building a logical argument about Reid for voters in the 2010 election.

"This doesn't really stand up to tests of reason. It is a big stretch," said Joseph Valenzano, an associate professor in the communications department at University of Nevada, Las Vegas who specializes in political rhetoric.

Valenzano said the labor ad is a success in that it prompts voters to think of Harry Reid, slave labor and CityCenter as being associated.

But it fails for two reasons, he said.

First, it doesn't establish any clear connection between the concepts other than mentioning them in the same ad. Second, the issue of alleged labor abuses in Dubai has nothing to do with how voters in Nevada will decide who to support in the upcoming election.

"This ad is designed for shock treatment," Valenzano said.

As the ad percolates in the public discourse it will lose effectiveness as voters realize the implied connections between Reid and Dubai labor practices are suspect and that nearly every Democratic and Republican politician in Nevada supported CityCenter because it was credited with creating thousands of new jobs during the greatest recession in state history, he said.

"I don't think it will make people mad," Valenzano said. "People are just going to be disinterested in it."

Reid's campaign referred to the ads as "false, sleazy attacks" and highlighted questions about Kreep's and Brown's credibility.

A statement from Reid's campaign called the operatives "hatchet men" and accused them of "campaign tactics so dirty that even President George H.W. Bush and top conservative Republicans have denounced them."