Washington- The Republican Party last night refused to cancel commercials that claim Sherrod Brown was a longtime tax scofflaw - even though the state of Ohio says the ad's claim is untrue.
Brown, the Democrat running against incumbent Mike DeWine, paid the tax bill years ago, soon after receiving a tax lien, according to newly released records from the Brown campaign and authenticated by the state.
But the Republican National Committee, supporting DeWine's reelection bid, is running commercials saying that Brown "didn't pay his unemployment taxes for 13 years."
DeWine ran his own commercial all day Wednesday with a DeWine family friend saying that Brown didn't pay "an outstanding tax bill for 12 years."
Hours after Brown campaign lawyers complained, DeWine spokesman Brian Seitchik said last night that the campaign would change its ad "as soon as possible," but that it still would reflect the fact that Brown "failed to pay a delinquent tax bill."
The RNC, however, said last night that it had no plans to change its ad.
The tax bill in question, for $1,776, was for unemployment taxes on the Brown campaign organization for the 1992 tax year. After the taxes weren't paid on time, the state filed a lien in Lorain County, where the campaign was based, on Dec. 2, 1993. The Brown campaign then paid the bill within four months, according to the state.
The lien should have been released then, and the state in fact issued a lien release on April 20, 1994. But because of a mixup, no one actually filed the necessary papers with the Lorain County recorder until 2005.
Republicans looking for avenues of attack seized on the dates of the lien and the 2005 release. The RNC bought $700,000 worth of television time in Ohio, starting on Tuesday, for its ad. The DeWine campaign on Wednesday spent an undisclosed sum for its own ad on the theme.
Brown's campaign demanded throughout the afternoon and evening Wednesday that the RNC and DeWine cancel their commercials.
"The ads are false," said Marc Elias, a Washington-based attorney for Brown's Senate campaign. "They are not close to being true."
But Aaron McLear, spokesman for the RNC, stood by the party's ad.
"Sherrod Brown failed to pay his unemployment taxes in 1992, and the Ohio Bureau of Employment Services filed a lien against him, which remained unpaid until June of 2005," he said.
Jon Allen, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services, the successor agency to the employment bureau, said the claims suggesting Brown didn't pay the tax bill for 12 or 13 years are false. His department researched the matter last year, when the Brown campaign asked about the lien.
The Brown campaign's own actions added to the confusion, although it was cleared up by Wednesday afternoon. When taxes are unpaid, the state issues a lien, and when it receives full payment, it sends a lien release. But it was up to the Brown campaign, not the state, to file the release with the county recorder. That didn't happen.
Brown aides surmise the mixup occurred because the Brown for Congress Committee changed its name to Friends of Sherrod Brown and got a new address after Brown's successful 1992 campaign. Correspondence may have been missent or lost. The campaign had the cash to pay the bill and had no reason to shirk it, Brown's former treasurer, now a judge, said.
The unreleased lien apparently was caught by a title searcher in 2005 when Brown was buying a new house, aides say. Friends of Sherrod Brown contacted the state and got the matter cleared up, Allen said.
It took a day for the Brown campaign to fully document what had happened, and even on Tuesday, when the RNC ad first ran, it thought that it may have inadvertently left the bill unpaid until 2005. But as soon as it documented the actual course of events, its lawyers jumped in, demanding that the ads end.
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