McCain, RNC Chairman denounce North Carolina TV ad calling Obama 'too extreme'

LAT: The presumptive Republican nominee urges North Carolina party officials to pull the spot, which includes footage of controversial pastor Jeremiah Wright.
By Maeve Reston, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
April 23, 2008

INEZ, KY. -- Traveling through Appalachia on a tour intended to show his interest in America's "forgotten places," Sen. John McCain said today he was urging North Carolina Republican officials to take down a new television ad that brands his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, as "too extreme for North Carolina."

"We asked them not to run it. I'm sending them an e-mail as we speak asking them to take it down," the presumptive Republican nominee told reporters aboard his campaign bus as he traveled to a town hall-style meeting in Inez, where President Lyndon B. Johnson launched his 1964 campaign on poverty.

"I don't know why they do it, and obviously I don't control them, but I'm making it very clear, as I have a couple of times in the past that there's no place for that kind of campaigning and the American people don't want it, period," McCain said.

McCain had not seen the North Carolina ad -- which states that Obama is too extreme and shows footage of the Illinois senator's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., shouting "Not God bless America, God damn America." In a March speech on race, Obama condemned Wright's controversial remarks, but said the pastor was part of his life and he could not disown him....

Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan, a native of Inez traveling with McCain today, said he called the North Carolina State Republican chairwoman at home this morning and then left a message on her cellphone asking her not to run the ad.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-obamaad24apr24,0,1410849.story