U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, aired a TV spot Friday that slams Republican opponent Bill Flores for what the ad characterizes as lying about his own voter history during a GOP primary debate in Waco.

At the February debate, one of Flores’ primary opponents, Rob Curnock — who was the GOP nominee in 2008 also — asked Flores whom he voted for in the last election.

“I voted for you,” Flores said, adding, “I wanted to compliment you on getting my vote.”

The Chet Edwards campaign ad picks up an issue heard in this year's GOP primary.

Flores later admitted that he didn’t actually vote in that 2008 general election because he got stuck in business meetings in Houston and couldn’t get back to his polling place in time to cast a ballot. He said he was joking at the debate when he said he voted for Curnock.

“When Bill Flores said he voted for Rob Curnock, he knew it wasn’t true,” says the narrator in the ad, which is Edwards’ first for the election cycle. “Once you lie, it’s hard to win back something very important: trust.”

The ad picked up where Curnock left off in the GOP primary, when he produced a radio ad on Flores’ voting comments at the February debate.

Flores’ campaign manager Matt Mackowiak called the Edwards ad “deceitful” and said it showed Edwards “realizes the voters are rejecting him.”

“Given a chance to discuss his 20-year record in Congress,” Mackowiak continued in an e-mail, “Congressman Edwards is running from his support of Obama and Pelosi’s job-killing agenda.”

Flores began airing his first ad earlier this week. The job-themed spot states Flores’ distaste for federal job-creation programs.

Spots for both Edwards and Flores, of Bryan, are running in the Waco and Bryan-College Station areas, but not on Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex stations, which broadcast to the northern part of the district.

The metroplex’s media market is vastly more expensive than those for Waco and Bryan-College Station.

Staffers for both campaigns didn’t disclose the price tag of their ad purchases, and instead said they would each purchased 1,000 gross rating points.

A gross rating point is a statistic tied to how many viewers an ad will reach. The cost of a point can vary from station to station and TV market to TV market.

mshapiro@wacotrib.com

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