The American Spectator

The Kilgore camp has followed up this morning’s conference call on the death penalty (see below) with two new ads featuring murder victims’ surviving relatives.

The first is titled “Kelly,” as in Kelly Timbrook, wife of Sergeant Rick Timbrook:

Edward Bell was a drug dealer illegally in this country. He was basically waiting for Rick underneath the stairs and shot him a few inches from his face. When they told me, I fell to my knees screaming. Edward Bell is in jail currently waiting on death row. Tim Kaine called for a moratorium on the death penalty. How couuld you not think the death penalty was appropriate? That’s not justice. When Tim Kaine calls the death penalty murder, I find it offensive. And I don’t trust Tim Kaine to uphold the law.

The second is “Stanley,” as in Stanley Rosenbluth, the conference call participant and president of Virginians United Against Crime, whose son and daughter-in-law were murdered by Tim Kaine’s client:

Richard was our first born…we had a great relationship. Married Becky. Everything they did, they did together, it was like two peas in a pod. Mark Sheppard shot Richard twice and went over and shot Becky two more times. Tim Kaine voluntarily represented the person who murdered my son. He stood with murderers in trying to get them off death row. No matter how heinous the crime, he doesn’t believe that death is a punishment. Tim Kaine says that Adolf Hitler doesn’t qualify for the death penalty. This was the…the worst mass murderer in modern times. Being as liberal as he is and the death penalty, he’s not representing everybody in the state. I don’t trust Tim Kaine when it comes to the death penalty. And I say that as a father whose had a son murdered. And the people of Virginia are entitled to know just what Tim Kaine is and what he stands for.

View both ads here.

My guess: this will dominate campaign coverage for the rest of the week. With such a hard hit, it’ll be very difficult for the Kaine campaign to stick to its talking points on this one, which amount to, “This isn’t an issue in this campaign,” and, “Tim will uphold the law.” This is a big day for Kilgore and a well executed day for his campaign. We’ll keep you updated on how the Kaine camp responds.