Kerry attacks may be affecting polls

Kerry wasn’t going to let such claims pass, spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter shot back yesterday, saying: “John Kerry is a fighter and he doesn’t tolerate lies from others”.

The anti-Kerry group that provoked the furore with a recent commercial distributed a second ad to the news media and said it would begin airing it next week in Pennsylvania, Nevada and New Mexico.

The ad mixes clips of a youthful Kerry talking about war atrocities in testimony to Congress in 1971 with images of veterans condemning his remarks.

The Kerry campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission that alleged the group behind the ad was illegally co-ordinating its efforts with the Bush-Cheney campaign. It cited “recent press reports” and the group’s own statements.

The Bush campaign denied the allegation, as did the organisation that aired the ad.

The intense back-and-forth underscored the closeness of the race for the White House and came as polls offered the first hint that the questioning of Kerry’s medal-winning service in the Vietnam War – allegations that he strongly condemned this week as lies – were taking a political toll.

One poll found that more than half the voters questioned had seen or heard of an ad by Swift Boat Veterans For Truth that accused Kerry of lying about events that earned him five medals a generation ago. The University of Pennsylvania’s National Annenberg Election Survey also found that 44% of self-described independent voters found the ad at least somewhat believable.

Separately, a CBS poll found a sharp drop in Kerry’s support among veterans since the end of the Democratic National Convention that highlighted his war record.

Polls after the convention indicated Kerry had made considerable progress toward the campaign’s goal of establishing him as a battle-tested veteran ready to assume command in an era of terrorism. Several veterans who served with him have campaigned alongside him, strongly supporting his combat record and calling him a hero.

In a new commercial that officials said was filmed on Thursday, the Democratic Party showed retired Air Force Gen. Merrill A. McPeak saying he had endorsed President George W. Bush four years ago but was backing Kerry now.

“Nothing is more important to me than protecting America,” says McPeak, a fighter pilot in Vietnam who rose to become Air Force chief of staff during the first Persian Gulf War in 1991. “John Kerry has the strength and common sense we need in a commander in chief.”

That message is sharply at odds with the image portrayed in the anti-Kerry ad that the nominee denounced on Thursday when he said Bush was relying on front groups to “do his dirty work”.

“I do think that Senator Kerry losing his cool should not be an excuse for him to lash out at the president with false and baseless attacks,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters in Crawford, Texas, on Friday.

“We’ve already said we weren’t involved in any way in these ads,” he said. “We’ve made that clear.”

Kerry’s campaign then trumpeted a political flier from Florida advertising a “pro-USA political rally” that appeared to show the veterans’ group and the local Bush-Cheney campaign as sponsors.

Campaigns often file complaints with the FEC, but the commission rarely intervenes quickly enough to alter the course of a race.

Records show that Bob Perry, a Houston homebuilder who is helping to finance the anti-Kerry commercials, was well-enough known to Bush to earn an invitation to visit the then-Texas governor.

“I hope all goes well with you,” Bush said in an April 15, 1997, letter. “Should you ever come to Austin, please come by and say hello.” Bush wrote in response to a letter asking him to veto legislation that would have placed new restrictions on title companies if it made it out of the Legislature.