Fifth District campaign ads mislead and misrepresent

Connecticut can be glad that it has at least one seriously competitive campaign for a major office in November's election — the campaign for U.S. representative in the 5th Congressional District, where U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, a Democrat, is being challenged by former state Sen. George Logan, a Republican who almost defeated her two years ago.But these days competitive campaigns are usually accompanied by ugly television commercials almost totalitarian in their lies or half-truths. The worst of them are usually sponsored by a national political action committee so the candidates they are trying to help don't get quite as tainted as they should be.In Connecticut, Republicans have been broadcasting a commercial denouncing Hayes for being the only member of Connecticut's congressional delegation who voted against legislation to classify fentanyl as a most dangerous drug. The commercial has video of Hayes smiling and laughing as if she is thinking about deadly drugs.The commercial means to give the impression that Hayes is indifferent to the drug problem or maybe even a drug dealer herself. It presumes, probably correctly, that most viewers won't stop a moment to think that the congresswoman must have had a better reason for opposing the bill.So the Hartford Courant inquired of Hayes and found that better reason.The legislation, Hayes said, imposed mandatory minimum prison sentences for possession of any amount of fentanyl, not distinguishing between traffickers and teenagers possessing small amounts or some substance containing fentanyl. According to Hayes, the bill also allowed judges no discretion in sentencing and lacked appropriations for drug treatment or law enforcement. While she was indeed the only member of Congress from Connecticut to oppose the bill, 130 Democrats from other states did.Agree with it or not, this was a reasonable explanation.Meanwhile Hayes and the Democrats are doing the same kind of thing to Logan, only worse.The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is broadcasting a commercial noting that Logan has said he would not vote to put into federal law the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the abortion rights case of Roe v. Wade. The commercial construes this to mean that Logan will vote with "Donald Trump and his extreme MAGA movement ... to outlaw all abortions, even here in Connecticut."The commercial concludes: "A vote for George Logan is a vote to ban abortion."While the Republican anti-Hayes commercial is only misleading, the Democratic anti-Logan commercial is complete misrepresentation. Logan repeatedly has committed himself to defending Connecticut's abortion law, which incorporates Roe v. Wade policy, and Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, doesn't support outlawing abortion federally but favors leaving the issue to the states.In any case, even a Congress with a Republican majority would not have the votes to outlaw abortion nationally.Ironically, when it comes to abortion, Hayes and most Democrats in Congress are the extremists, not Logan, Trump and the Republicans. The Democrats support what they call the Women's Health Protection Act, which would prohibit any government regulation of abortion.That is, a vote for Hayes is a vote for the abortion of viable fetuses and even for leaving born-alive children, bleeding and gasping for breath, to die on surgical tables.Hayes, most other Democrats in Congress, and many elsewhere don't really want to restore Roe v. Wade. That case held that abortion prior to fetal viability was an individual right but that after viability government properly could regulate or even prohibit abortion. As constitutional law this was questionable but as politics and policy it balanced the interests at stake and gave protection to the developed fetus.Over the next decade or so even most anti-abortion states may incorporate Roe v. Wade policy into their law as Connecticut has done. But as the Women's Health Protection Act shows and as the more candid among them acknowledge, Democrats want to "go beyond Roe" and give the country all abortions all the time. Strangely, the only moderates left in congressional politics on the abortion issue are Republicans.Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. He can be reached at CPowell@cox.net.