Candidates Receive Criticism for Advertisements

The upcoming elections have definitely been the talk amongst everyone in the eastern Kentucky area. The Supreme Court Justice Will T. Scott is currently in the race against Judge Janet Stumbo from the Circuit Court of Appeals. Stumbo has an interest in winning the position, although she lost the position to Scott before, back in 2004. Both of the candidates have recently had a number of advertisements displayed in their favor. However, both of their campaigns have received criticism from the Judicial Campaign Conduct Committee in Kentucky.

According to the committee, both candidates have advertisements that provide false and misleading information. They have even said that one of the advertisements from Will T. Scott has deliberately been used as a way of appealing to voters in a racial way. In the advertisements, two African American individuals are sentenced to receive life in prison because they murdered a woman who was pregnant. In the advertisement, Scott claims Stumbo is too soft when it comes to crime, especially since she had voted to overturn the actual conviction of these two African American men who committed such a horrendous crime. However, the committee says that the advertisement is completely false, especially because those two men were place side by side with two Caucasian women who had nothing to do with the case itself.

The chairman for the committee, William Fortune, has said, “What we found to be highly offensive was the use of the two black men repeatedly. This is offensive, misleading and false in our opinion.” Scott begs to differ. He says, “We did not pick that because of the color of the defendants. Those were two murder cases.” He also points out that the advertisement is about showing the public Stumbo’s opinion, which was the primary purpose that the advertisement was created in the first place. Scott said, “We are just pointing out how reliably liberal she is in the criminal law area, and we are pointing that out and making the contrast.”

Scott is not the only once receiving criticism for the advertisements. Janet Stumbo has also recently received criticism for an advertisement that was displayed in response to Scott’s attack advertisements towards her. In the advertisement, she is critical of Scott and his views on a case on child abuse. The advertisement says that because the child was so hungry and was looking to avoid starvation, he ate his own waste. Fortune criticized it and said, “That’s simply not in the opinion. It says maybe he was eating feces, but it doesn’t say anything about avoiding starvation, and we thought that was false it’s not in the opinion itself.” In response to that, Stumbo said “Poor word choice? Fine. I thought the facts of the case merited it, and that was the only complaint about it.”