So the right to lie in political campaigns is under attack now?

In a rare and surprising move, a state District Court judge in Reno has ordered a political ad targeting an incumbent state senator pulled off the air, just days before the primary election.

The order, first reported by the Reno Gazette-Journal’s Ray Hagar, is rare in politics, where ads of dubious truthfulness are often challenged, but only rarely taken down.

The ad, paid for by Republican Gary Schmidt, accuses state Sen. Ben Kieckhefer, R-Reno, of being part of the Republicans for Harry Reid movement in 2010, when the Democratic Senate majority leader faced off with tea party darling Sharron Angle.

Reid won that race handily.

But there’s no evidence to support Schmidt’s allegation that Kieckhefer was part of the pro-Reid Republican group, started by longtime GOP consultant Sig Rogich. (A membership list of Republicans for Reid that’s still online doesn’t show Kieckhefer’s name, for example.)

Kieckhefer filed a defamation lawsuit against Schmidt over the ad, which also says Kieckhefer promised not to vote to extend a package of sunset taxes, a promise Kieckhefer ultimately broke. And on Friday, state District Court Judge Patrick Flannagan granted Kieckhefer’s ex parte request for a preliminary injunction requiring Schmidt to take the ad down.

“Ben Kieckhefer is likely to suffer irreparable injury to his career and reputation from defendant’s television advertisements,” the judge wrote in a two-page order. Schmidt told Hagar that he personally went to Reno’s three major TV stations to make sure the ad was no longer running after the order was issued.

Kieckhefer, for his part, denied supporting Reid in 2010, even if close associates such as the late state Sen. Bill Raggio and Reno Mayor Bob Cashell did. Schmidt himself admits there’s no direct evidence to support his charge, saying that there’s no proof anywhere that Kieckhefer supported Angle in that contest.

Then again, that’s not surprising. Many Nevada Republicans ignored Angle’s campaign, which was characterized by bizarre remarks given to friendly interviewers, erratic personal behavior and racist TV ads. It would be unsurprising to find Kieckhefer not supporting Reid, but also declining to publicly back Angle. But it’s also easy to understand how, in a Republican primary with Scmidt styling himself as a conservative insurgent running against a moderate Republican, the charge that Kieckhefer backed Reid would hurt him among the GOP base.

For his part, Kieckhefer flatly denies he supported Reid.

“It is important that at some point, when something is blatantly false, that it should not be tolerated,” Kieckhefer told Hagar. “I am a staunch defender of the First Amendment. I am a former journalist and I believe in it. But it is not universal and it should not protect people’s ability to just make something up.

“And that’s what he did, he just made it up,” Kieckhefer said about Schmidt’s claim that he supported and endorsed Reid.

To find an exaggeration, or even an outright lie, in politics is not unusual. But Schmidt’s order (linked below) prohibiting Schmidt from airing the ad certainly is. But the best is yet to come; if this case goes forward, Kieckhefer will have to prove how and by how much his reputation was damaged by the mere allegation he supported Reid. Better hope it’s a jury of Republicans!