2nd District GOP ads spotlight a bitter feud

The bad blood between GOP 2nd Congressional District candidates Tim Bridgewater and John Swallow is now spilling through mailboxes and the airwaves.

In response to what he calls "a pattern of negative campaigning" by Swallow — the two faced each other in the same primary in 2002 — Bridgewater this week started running a radio and TV ad implying Swallow can't be trusted.

Swallow, meanwhile, has mailed out a brochure citing "facts" that show him in a good light, Bridgewater coming up lacking.

Both men's ads quote stories from the Deseret Morning News and The Salt Lake Tribune. The pair face off in Tuesday's GOP primary, the winner up against Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson in the fall.

Swallow said the Bridgewater radio and TV ads "disgust me. The only way he can win this primary is to go hard-core negative against me, and he is."

Bridgewater provides a three-ring binder full of material that he says shows Swallow has a history of last-minute, negative campaigning and that the Swallow campaign has hired two consultants known for such work.

Swallow maintains his mailer, which went out this week, is a fair and thoroughly researched comparison between his experience and political history and Bridgewater's.

"It is the height of hypocrisy for (Bridgewater) to criticize me for hiring" Virginia-based consultant Lester Terry Cooper "when someone from the Bridgewater campaign called (Cooper) last fall asking to hire him to do opposition research on me, but he couldn't because I was already his client," said Swallow.

Alan Crooks, Bridgewater's campaign manager, said he knows of no one from the Bridgewater campaign ever calling Cooper, whom he called a professional negative campaign expert.

"The negative, misleading mailer John sent out two years ago the weekend before the primary is still haunting us" among voters, Bridgewater said earlier this week. "His M.O. is to counter my ads with false accusations. Despite promising not to go negative, he is," said Bridgewater, who lost a close primary to Swallow in 2002.

Swallow's new mailer says that given the chance, Bridgewater has attacked Swallow by name time and again. "Why is Tim Bridgewater attacking a fellow Republican?" the brochure asks. "Because Tim Bridgewater doesn't want you to know the facts . . ."