The Ambassador Bridge company has aired another television ad in its campaign to defeat Gov. Rick Snyder’s proposed new bridge to Canada, this time directly criticizing the judge who threw bridge company leaders in jail this month.
The 30-second spot shows a photograph of Wayne County Circuit Judge Prentis Edwards and, in a voice-over commentary, calls him “an activist Detroit judge” who put bridge officials in jail.
Edwards’ office said he would have no comment on the ad.
The ad implies that Edwards acted because Snyder recently appointed Edwards’ son to a judgeship in Wayne County.
Earlier this month, Edwards jailed bridge owner Manuel (Matty) Moroun and his top aide, Dan Stamper, president of the Detroit International Bridge Co., for civil contempt of court for the DIBC’s failure to complete the long-delayed Gateway project at the Ambassador Bridge as the judge ordered in February 2010.
In the new ad, the company says that it is the Michigan Department of Transportation that has refused to finish the project because “Gov. Snyder wants to build his own $2-billion bridge.”
And the ad implies that taxpayers will have to pay for the bridge even though Snyder has made clear that Canada will front Michigan’s portion of the cost and be paid back through future bridge tolls.
Snyder spokeswoman Sara Wurfel said the administration has found it “challenging” to counter the advertising onslaught, which she said totaled more than $5 million before this latest round began.
Read more at Detroit Free Press.
The Troll is whining that the state Department of Transportation is responsible for completing the access ramps, not him as the court ruled. The ramps could have been completed already if he had spent the money on his obligations instead of these attack ads.
