(05/25/10) "GOP candidate’s ad claims he served with Jack Bauer" (by Daniel Tencer, Raw Story)

[Spang]

Chuck DeVore, a GOP senate candidate running for the nomination to unseat California Sen. Barbara Boxer this fall, was probably kidding in an ad his campaign team released this week when he claimed he trained in the Army with 24's Jack Bauer. But the Republican's targeting of "Jack Bauer fans" as a potential voting base is no joke.

"In 1983, Chuck DeVore found himself at Fort Knox, Kentucky, in the Army ROTC Basic Camp, where he earned his "expert badge" in rifle and scored second best in his training battalion," the three-minute ad, posted online on Monday, stated. "Cadet J. Bauer was rumored to have been the battalion's top shooter that year. ... As a cadet, Chuck would have gotten top score in land navigation except that Jack Bauer sabotaged the course."

Underlying that bit of humor is a serious attempt to capitalize on the popularity of Fox's thriller-drama 24, which aired its final episode Monday night. As the show's lead character, Jack Bauer developed a controversial reputation for torturing suspects and ignoring constitutional rights.

Referring to them as "Jack Bauer fans," the DeVore ad asks viewers, "Which person would jack want as his us senator? Barbara Boxer,a Guantanamo-closing, tax-raising, big-government-growing ultra-liberal who reads Miranda rights to foreign terrorists? Or Chuck DeVore, a US Army intelligence officer who likes Guantanamo Bay as it is, thinks foreign terrorists should have an interrogator, not a lawyer, and supports lower taxes and smaller government?"

"'24' has had a very avid conservative, national security-oriented audience," DeVore spokesman Joshua Trevino told the Sacramento Bee. "It's going to reach a lot of people who are going to be very sympathetic to kind of candidate Chuck is."

Some political observers objected to DeVore's blending of humor with actual biographical details.

And Steve Singiser at DailyKos, among others, notes a bit of irony in using a character played by Kiefer Sutherland as a prop for a conservative political campaign. Sutherland is the grandson of Tommy Douglas, a Baptist preacher who became a folk hero in Canada for being the first lawmaker on the continent to introduce a universal health care scheme.

The following video was posted to YouTube by Chuck DeVore's senate campaign, May 24, 2010.

(No Nudity)

THe Source (http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0525/gop-ad-claims-served-jack-bauer/)

[Suzan]

Here's another one. Shades of Dick Blumenthal.

Chuck DeVore's Misleading Claim he was "Shot At In Lebanon"

Republican Senate candidate Chuck DeVore, currently trailing third in the California polls behind Carly Fiorina and Tom Campbell, has been caught overstating and misrepresenting his military record. According to the Los Angeles Times:

Throughout the campaign, DeVore has emphasized his service as a military officer and a young Reagan White House appointee at the Pentagon as experiences that helped make him the most qualified candidate. But at times he appears to have overstated those accomplishments, particularly his experience under fire and his role in the development of a U.S.-Israeli anti-ballistic-missile defense program. He also has faced criticism for acting on behalf of a group with ties to political contributors.

A cornerstone of DeVore's Senate bid is his 24 years in the California National Guard and U.S. Army Reserve, which he argues has given him national security expertise lacked by his better-known, better-funded GOP rivals; former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and former Rep. Tom Campbell. He trails both in polls.

During a radio debate with them in early March, DeVore talked of being the sole candidate in the Senate race with military experience. "I'm a lieutenant colonel of military intelligence within the U.S. Army," he said. His campaign material shows he's a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army retired reserves.

DeVore said both references are accurate because the retired reserves are part of the Army: "My nameplate says U.S. Army."

He spoke during the debate of being "shot at in Lebanon" but did not make clear that the shooting occurred in the 1980s while DeVore was a college student studying Arabic and other subjects in the Middle East. Nor did he note that while the shooting was in his vicinity, there was no indication he was a target or was in actual danger.

It seems like this story is one-part Dick Blumenthal serving in Vietnam, one-part Hillary Clinton facing sniper fire in Bosnia. And it can't help that DeVore has made his service a cornerstone of his campaign. The Times reports: "Chuck DeVore made sure that the June 8 ballot described him as 'Assemblyman/Military Reservist' because, the Irvine lawmaker said, he didn't want to be mistaken for just another politician."


http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/chuck-devore-republicans-dick-blumenthal

Full story here (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-devore-20100521,0,3945931,full.story)