October 14, 2008 05:18 PM UTC

New Statewide TV Spot Rips McCain "Water Grab"

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Pueblo Chieftain reports:

John McCain is being attacked again – this time in television ads – for suggesting that the Colorado River Compact be renegotiated.

The new TV spots, paid for by the League of Conservation Voters, accuse the Republican presidential hopeful of wanting to rewrite the 1922 compact that divides the river basin’s water in the West, and send more of it to the downstream states of California, Nevada and McCain’s home state of Arizona.

The new ads, which began running on cable channels statewide on Monday, are the latest attacking McCain since he told The Pueblo Chieftain in an exclusive interview in August that the compact needs to be renegotiated to address the population growth in the Southwest.

Even though McCain backed off his statement a week later, the league’s political director, Tony Massaro, said it’s still an issue that will resonate with Colorado voters.

“This is a guy who has consistently touted himself as, ‘I understand Western issues, and the guy from Illinois couldn’t possibly understand them like I do,’ ” Massaro said. “But it wasn’t the guy from Illinois who came into Colorado and put his foot in the biggest cow pie that you can put your foot in in Colorado. It was the guy from Arizona. Either he isn’t that good on Western issues, or he knows how this plays and was playing to Nevada.” Like Colorado, Nevada is another swing state that could go either for McCain or his Democratic rival, Barack Obama.

The league, which is a 527 political action group that operates independently of Obama’s campaign, has spent about $300,000 on the ad buy. It plans to keep running the ads until the Nov. 4 election, Massaro said, adding that the group may expand the advertisements if it can raise more money to pay for them…