Republican congressional candidate Bill Flores is demanding that U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards stop airing a campaign ad that claims Flores once played a role in the layoffs of more than 3,000 workers.

The new ad is not only false but “defamatory,” Flores said Tuesday. If Edwards does not voluntarily stop running the television commercial, Flores said he may take legal action to have it taken off the air.

Megan Jacobs, spokeswoman for Edwards’ campaign, said it stands by the message in the ad and has no plans to pull it.

U.S. House candidate Bill Flores (left) is asking U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards to stop running an ad that Flores’ camp claims is defamatory.

Edwards, a Waco Democrat, will face Flores, who is from Bryan, at the polls in November. They are vying for the District 17 congressional seat.

The ad in question focuses on layoffs made in 1998 by an oilfield services company called Baker Hughes. During the second half of that year, the company laid off more than 3,600 workers, according to company filings.

In August of that year, Baker Hughes acquired an oilfield services company called Western Atlas. Flores was Western Atlas’ senior vice president and chief financial officer.

Edwards’ ad starts with a clip from a Flores commercial that says his energy companies have created more than 500 jobs.

Edwards’ ad then says: “What (Flores) doesn’t say is that an oil company he helped run laid off over 3,000 workers. And then paid off its top executives with millions. Over three thousand workers thrown out of work — executives get payments of millions?”

Flores said that is false because he lost his management authority when the merger occurred. He continued working for Western Atlas through December 1998. But his only job was a special project that involved selling off part of a company Western Atlas had in the Soviet Union, he said.

Flores emphasized that he was never on Baker Hughes’ payroll.

As for the layoffs, Flores said a small number of people lost their jobs because of the merger. They were people like himself whose jobs were “redundant” once the companies joined, he said. Fewer than 200 such layoffs happened, he said, out of a combined pool of about 36,000 employees.

The rest of the layoffs occurred later, Flores said. Company filings said they were because of market conditions, he said.

“I did not run that company, and I did not lay anybody off,” Flores said.

Jacobs, from Edwards’ campaign, said Flores’ rationale strains credibility. The company paid $15.4 million to employees deemed redundant after the merger. But it also gave another $60.8 million to executives affected by the deal, she noted, pointing to company filings.

“The cause and effect there seems pretty clear,” Jacobs said.

Edwards’ campaign issued a statement Tuesday calling on Flores to release his income tax returns for 1998 and 1999.

“The question we have is did Flores make a big bonus off those layoffs?” Jacobs said.

Flores’ campaign manager, Matt Mackowiak, said Flores has filed all required financial disclosure information.

“This absurd request from the desperate Edwards campaign does not address how he has run a very false and defamatory ad that he should pull,” Mackowiak said.

cculp@wacotrib.com

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