'Smackdown' in 2nd District

Looks like bare-knuckle fighting in the 2nd Congressional District the two weeks until Election Day.

Republican John Swallow and the national GOP House PAC are "twisting the truth. They are running a smear campaign against me, and I had to respond," Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson said Thursday.

"I will never stoop to the personal attacks (Matheson) is now making against me," said Swallow. "He's attacking my character; he's in way over his head."

For a week or so both Swallow and the National Republican Congressional Committee have been running TV ads calling Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson a pawn of the Democratic congressional leaders, lambasting him for voting against President Bush's tax cuts and against the ban on partial birth abortions.

Matheson says those characterizations are gross distortions or outright lies.

Thursday night, Matheson started running a new TV ad that quotes Swallow's old Republican opponents — Tim Bridgewater and David Wilde — saying in their experience Swallow "lacks integrity" and campaigns using "falsehoods, half-truths and misstatements."

"Now he's at it again," the Matheson ad says of Swallow's latest claims about the congressman.

And, like Swallow, Matheson is now getting some national help.

Brigham Young University political science professor Kelly Patterson, who is studying key U.S. House races — including Utah's 2nd District — said he received a pro-Matheson mailer Wednesday from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

State Democratic Party chairman Donald Dunn said he fully expects the DCCC — that party's political action committee counter to the NRCC — to start running TV ads in Matheson's behalf, ads that may or may not go after Swallow.

And Swallow says he's heard the campaign committee has now bought TV ad time in Utah. "They're coming after me the last two weeks," Swallow said.

In 2000, both committees spent around $1 million each in the 2nd District race. Those contributions went up in 2002 but were difficult to track because of the Byzantine dealings between the national groups, local state parties, even cross donations between state parties.

The new McCain-Feingold federal campaign finance law has changed all that, says Dunn. "No longer can the national party give to us" and the local parties then make TV buys. "We don't know what the national party will do (on behalf of a specific candidate) — to know would be illegal."