Representative Kevin Yoder (R-KS03) is in a dogfight this year to hold his congressional seat. The DCCC sees it, having already committed to a significant air buy (1.1M by accounts) to help win back congress.
Yoder has been challenged by his connections to payday lenders, ethics violations, and that skinny dipping incident while on an international trip.
More recently, though, Rep. Yoder has been accused of being a career politician. This isn't a difficult charge to make. Yoder, who first ran for office at age 26 straight out of law school is pretty much the definition of career politician.
In order to attack this image, Rep. Yoder has released a series of advertisements talking about how connected he is to the state of Kansas. In the most recent ad, however, Representative Yoder’s campaign staff made a mistake that will sound a lot like someone who is the career politician he’s denouncing.
www.kansascity.com/…
The spot, called "Prairie Spirit," features video of a wheat harvest, a rather common occurrence in Kansas (the shot starts at :03).
But the harvest video wasn't shot in Kansas. It was provided by a stock footage company, and was apparently shot in eastern Europe.
While the Yoder campaign laughed it off as a reasonable mistake, they dropped this response as well to those who inquired:
"We didn't have time to get a camera crew out to the Yoder family farm"
This morning, I’ve spent time calling video production companies in the Kansas City, Wichita, Topeka, Manhattan, Lawrence markets and have discovered at least five Kansas companies had the ability on one day’s notice to drive almost anywhere in order to take footage if a campaign asked and was willing to pay.
Rates varied, and several preferred to do the work on the weekend if possible, but others were open to an immediate travel date.
In the end, the issue wasn’t that the campaign didn’t have time, it appears they were disinterested in hiring Kansas companies to do the work. Talk about promoting a Kansas economy.
The Sidie campaign issued this statement:
If Kevin Yoder doesn’t even know what our district looks like, he certainly can’t be trusted to represent the hardworking people who live here. It’s a sad day when a career politician uses Slovenian farmlands to pretend he is in touch with Kansas values.
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