Tarkanian goes negative with ad against Lowden on abortion issue

Danny Tarkanian has launched the first negative radio ad of the U.S. Senate campaign, directly attacking his Republican opponent Sue Lowden for her shifting position on abortion over the years.

In the ad, which is called "political convenience" and is targeted to run on conservative talk show radio stations, a female narrator says Lowden "told conservatives she was pro-life, but since then the truth has come out."

The ad alleges that Lowden once supported Roe v Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that protects a woman’s right to have an abortion in the first trimester of her pregnancy.

The 30-second spot also says Lowden voted for an initiative "supporting abortion on demand" and was involved in an effort to "change the pro-life position of the Republican Party."

Lowden has acknowledged that in the 1980s and as a private citizen she supported a woman’s right to choose abortion, saying at the time there was a stigma attached to unwed mothers.

Lowden also has acknowledged supporting a 1990 Nevada referendum that embedded abortion rights into the state law, although last year she told a conservative publication "Human Events" that Roe v Wade was a "bad decision."

In defending her change of heart, Lowden notes that as a state senator in the early 1990s she helped lead an effort to require parental notification, although the bill failed on the Senate floor. And she said that as a public official she has always been against abortion.

"My views on abortion have clearly changed over the decades and I have become pro-life – which I believe is consistent with the path of many other individuals," Lowden said in a statement last year when the issue first came up in the U.S. Senate race.

Lowden has denied reports she tried to get the abortion issue out of the 1996 platform in the state Republican convention, and she says she voted at the national convention to keep the conservative anti-abortion GOP position in the platform.

Lowden’s campaign manager Robert Uithoven slammed Tarkanian’s effort to attack Lowden on abortion, which hasn’t been high on the GOP agenda this election so far in a year in which economic issues resonate more with voters.

"Danny Tarkanian is doing what he always does late in a campaign, attack with desperate, misguided jabs that miss," Uithoven said. "His campaign is winding down with less support than when it started and we predict he stumbles his way to another defeat."

Tarkanian, a Las Vegas businessman and former University of Nevada, Las Vegas, basketball star, has lost two previous elections for the Nevada Senate and for secretary of state. In the U.S. Senate contest, he has been trying to appeal to conservative Republicans who dominate primary elections.

Lowden has been leading the crowded Republican field of a dozen contenders ahead of the June 8 primary, beating Tarkanian by double digits in the latest two opinion polls commissioned by the Review-Journal.

She also has out-maneuvered Reno Assemblywoman Sharron Angle, who has the most conservative voting record, on the abortion issue by winning a key endorsement earlier this month. The Susan B. Anthony List said it was backing Lowden and plans to spend $1 million in Nevada to try and help defeat the Democratic incumbent, U.S. Sen. Harry Reid.

Listen to the ad: