| | Group to run Mich. ad tying Detroit mayor to Obama
 LANSING, Mich. -- An ad tying Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to disgraced Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is set to run on cable news channels in Macomb County.
Freedom's Defense Fund, a Washigton-based group that funds Republican candidates' campaigns, says it will spend about $25,000 to air the ads over the next 10 days.
Executive director Todd Zirkle said Friday that it's fair to run the ad, which shows Obama praising Kilpatrick before speaking to the Detroit Economic Club in May 2007. At the time, Kilpatrick was not facing any charges in a text messaging scandal that led to his resignation Thursday in a plea deal involving 10 felony charges.
"I think he (Obama) is running on his judgment, and we think it's pretty poor in this instance," Zirkle said in a phone interview. Kilpatrick "was well known to be ethically challenged for years."
Obama's Michigan campaign spokesman, Brent Colburn, said Obama made the comments long before the mayor's troubles began.
"The ad ... fails to mention that Senator Obama called on Mayor Kilpatrick to resign," Colburn said. On Thursday, Colburn said the campaign welcomed Kilpatrick's resignation because it "is the only way for the city to move forward and get back to business,"
It won't be the first time a conservative group has tried to tie the Illinois senator to people it deems questionable. Last month, the Obama campaign responded swiftly with an ad of its own to a TV spot tying him to 1960's radical William Ayers, one of the founders of the Weather Underground.
The Ayers ad was run in Michigan and other states by the conservative American Issues Project. The ad's lone financier, Texas billionaire Harold Simmons, was one of the main funders of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who targeted 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Fox News and CNN declined to air the anti-Obama ad.
Freedom's Defense Fund is targeting voter-rich Macomb County, an area north of Detroit that traditionally has been the home of Michigan's Reagan Democrats, because it thinks Obama will have trouble winning the state if he loses the county.
In a sign of Macomb's importance, McCain and running mate Sarah Palin were scheduled to hold a Friday evening rally at the Freedom Hill Amphitheatre in Sterling Heights. Obama also has campaigned in the crucial county.
Zirkle says Freedom's Defense Fund plans to run other ads tying Obama to Ayers and to his former minister, Jeremiah Wright, who came under fire for sermons in which he accused the government of conspiring against blacks.
Although the group didn't back Republican presidential nominee John McCain in the GOP primaries, Zirkle said it's determined to keep Obama from winning the White House.
"We do have serious, serious questions about Obama because we're for economic freedom and we believe he's a socialist," Zirkle said.
Colburn responded, "John McCain's message that 'the fundamentals of this economy are strong' isn't going to play in Michigan, so his supporters are resorting to the same old desperate, cynical Washington style political attacks."
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