Just one day into the general election for Rhode Island’s gubernatorial race, Democrat Gina Raimondo has already committed a major gaffe.
Yesterday, Raimondo released an attack ad that targeted Cranston, using photos of rundown buildings to portray the city negatively, in an attack on Cranston Mayor Allan Fung.
But there was one big problem. The photos used by Raimondo’s ad were of Providence, not Cranston. Raimondo’s campaign did not deny that they had used the wrong footage, and WPRI-TV noted that “the error immediately called to mind one of the most embarrassing episodes of Raimondo’s first term” when she used b-roll of Iceland instead of Rhode Island for a tourist campaign called “Cooler & Warmer.”
Raimondo is running her campaign the same way she runs her administration: poorly, and full of mistakes.
WPRI-TV has more:
Faulty video footage in a commercial is once again causing headaches for Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo.
Fresh off her primary victory last night, Raimondo’s campaign began airing an attack ad Thursday morning that criticizes Republican nominee Allan Fung for his record as mayor of Cranston, showing pictures of rundown buildings in a hard-knock neighborhood.
There’s just one problem: those streets are in the Silver Lake section of Providence, not Cranston – as the Fung campaign was quick to point out, and follow-up visits by reporters confirmed.
Raimondo’s campaign – which has been paying big money to Putnam Partners, one of the nation’s leading Democratic advertising firms, for its commercials – did not deny the snafu…
The error immediately called to mind one of the most embarrassing episodes of Raimondo’s first term, when her staff put out a video for the short-lived ‘Cooler & Warmer’ tourism campaign that showed B-roll of Iceland instead of Providence.
Fung’s campaign pounced. “Not only is Gina Raimondo running a completely incompetent administration, she’s running a completely incompetent campaign,” Andrew Augustus, a spokesman for Fung, said in a statement.
‘If she spent more time in state, maybe she would know the difference between Providence and Cranston,’ he added…
Meanwhile, a group backed by Fung’s allies in the Republican Governors Association began airing their own attack ad first thing Thursday criticizing Raimondo’s record. The group, Rhode Island Forward, said it has bought time to air the commercial regularly on local stations over the next 12 days.
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