CHESAPEAKE, Va. — Democrat Barack Obama on Thursday seized on a report that John McCain didn’t know how many houses he and his wife own, launching a TV ad portraying his Republican opponent as out of touch, attacking him on the stump for it and dispatching surrogates to do the same.
His strategy pleased many Democrats who have been urging him to go negative, but it also prompted McCain to renew his earlier criticisms of the Illinois senator as elitist and hypocritical.
The controversy over McCain’s real estate holdings erupted after the Arizona senator told a reporter for Politico on Wednesday that he would have his staff get back to him about how many homes he and wife, Cindy, have. She’s the owner of a large beer distributorship.
McCain’s staff initially said he had at least four homes. The Obama campaign found seven. Politico on Thursday reported finding an eighth.
In Obama’s TV ad, an announcer says, “Here’s one house Americans can’t afford to let John McCain move into,” referring to the White House.
The ad aims simultaneously to anger Americans hit by the mortgage crisis, redefine voters’ impression of McCain as a war hero and maverick politician, and turn the tables on the idea that Obama, a Harvard Law graduate, is the one who’s elitist.
The description of McCain’s losing track of his homes seemed to build on another attack that Obama supporters have been accused of making but have denied: that McCain, 71, is confused or forgetful.
McCain spokesman Brian Rogers shot back: “Does a guy who made more than $4 million last year, just got back from vacation on a private beach in Hawaii and bought his own million-dollar mansion with the help of a convicted felon really want to get into a debate about houses?”
Sales of Obama’s best-selling memoir and a subsequent book have made him wealthy. Hawaii, where he vacationed, is where he was raised and where relatives live. Rogers’ last reference was to Antoin Rezko, a Chicago developer who had supported Obama politically. Rezko was convicted of several counts of fraud and bribery, but Obama wasn’t connected to the case.
