The McCain-Feingold campaign reform law says independent groups can't run pro- or anti-candidate TV ads 60 days before the general election. And before that deadline, one senior citizen group ran ads complimenting Matheson for this very vote.

Now two senior groups — the Seniors Coalition and United Seniors Association — are sending fliers into 2nd District homes again thanking Matheson for his Medicare votes.

Even more ironically, the ads by Swallow and the Utah Republican Party adopt old arguments made by Democratic leaders against that bill.

For example, during Senate debate of that bill, liberal Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., thundered that the bill was "a Trojan horse to reshape Medicare" that was "a product of the right-wing ideology" to benefit the wealthy.

Yet Swallow has run a TV ad complaining that Matheson votes like Kennedy — even showing the aging pol in the ad.

Congressional Democrats had also complained that the Medicare reform bill would send many seniors to Canada to seek cheaper drugs there, a complaint echoed by the new GOP and Swallow ads. Also, those ads blast Matheson for a vote he cast against allowing reimportation of cheaper Canadian drugs.

While most Republicans indeed supported drug reimportation on that vote in July 2003, what the ads fail to say is that joining Matheson in opposition that day were Cannon and Bishop.

In short, Swallow and Republicans are attacking Matheson for two roll calls where he voted exactly the same way as Cannon and Bishop — and in one of those instances he was among a handful of Democrats who helped Republicans to a win on health care reform.

---

E-mail: lee@desnews.com; bbjr@desnews.com