Crawford: Cox accidentally ran Inhofe endorsement ad

In a follow-up to our stories on July 22nd (BREAKING NEWS: Crawford Running 1998 Ad With Inhofe Endorsement and Inhofe: Crawford Ad "Inappropriate"; "Not Endorsing Crawford"), the John Crawford for Insurance Commissioner campaign has clarified the events behind the running of the ad.

According to Crawford, the ad (which first run in his 1998 re-election campaign) was mistakenly run by Cox Communications. Crawford had delivered two commercials to Cox - one to be run, and the other (with the Inhofe endorsement) for them to look at filming a similar one (but without the Inhofe section). A Cox employee inadvertently uploaded the wrong ad, which ran on television for a few days. Cox told the Crawford campaign that "this was [an] unintentional, human error."

Since then, the Crawford campaign has pulled the ad both from the airwaves, and from YouTube. The ad with the Inhofe endorsement had been posted on his website as well, but it no longer is on the internet.

While this may be the case, it does not explain why the Crawford campaign knowingly placed the ad on YouTube and on his website. A Cox employee might have mistakenly aired the wrong commercial, but they could not have edited his website. In addition, the ad was re-worked to include a "paid for by" disclaimer reflecting his 2010 account, so some work had to have been done on the ad before running it, and I find it hard to believe that Cox did not ask for approval on the re-worked edition.