Accountability 2010 is spending $100,000 to air the ad, which cost $15,000 to produce, against Steve Pearce. The ad is a parody of Gov. Bill Richardson’s famous job interview ad.

Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund is spending $69,035 in the 1st Congressional District on a new ad.

The Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund ad for Heinrich is the first ad of the cycle for Heinrich and just the seventh district that the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund is spending money in. The group has spent $768,690.45 in New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District, more than three-quarters of the amount of money they have spent overall this election cycle.

Pearce’s campaign says that the ads’ premise has already been proven false because of a faulty investigation by the ethics watchdog that accused him of wrongdoing.

Citizens for Responsiblity and Ethics in Washington (CREW) did admit that they failed to uncover a part of the story in the sale of Pearce’s company. Factcheck.org recounted what happened earlier this year with an ad by the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund that made a similar claim:

CREW added Pearce to its annual list of “most corrupt” members in September 2007. The group alleged that Pearce “appears to have violated the Ethics in Government Act” for failing to disclose the 2003 sale of the assets of his company, Lea Fishing Tools, to Key Energy on the financial disclosure reports required to be filed annually by members of Congress.

After CREW’s 2007 report was published, Pearce sent a letter to the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (known as the ethics committee) to determine whether he should have disclosed the transaction. On Oct. 11, 2007, the committee told Pearce in a letter that he did not violate the ethics rules. The panel concluded that Pearce sold the assets of his company — not the company itself. The company was renamed and continued to operate, so the sale of its assets did not have to be disclosed, the panel found.

CREW did not exactly give Pearce a clean bill of health. Pearce links to a press release from the group that admitted its error in not uncovering the letter between 2007 and 2008.

But the group says it “stand[s] by our original interpretation of the Ethics in Government Act.”

According to the Act, filers must report each purchase, sale, or exchange of real property or securities by themselves, their spouse, or dependent child when the value exceeds $1,000 in a calendar year [see statute here].  Contrary to the position taken by the House Ethics Committee in its letter, there is no exception in the Act for transactions involving the assets of a business actively engaged in a trade or business.  The only exception to the reporting requirement is that a transaction solely by and between the reporting individual, his spouse, or dependent children need not be reported.

Pearce also attacks CREW itself, noting that it has a liberal bent and has some big liberal donors.

The group’s list of crooked candidates in 2010 features 14 candidates, only three of which are Democrats. Two more are independents. One, Charlie Crist of Florida, was a Republican. The other, Jim Traficant of Ohio, was a Democrat. CREW’s list of worst governors features 9 Republicans to just two Democrats. One of those Democrats was New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.

However, the group’s list of most corrupt members of Congress, the list which Pearce found himself on in 2007 and 2008, currently features eight Democrats and seven Republicans.

The DCCC ad also hits Pearce on his support of the Fair Tax. The Fair Tax would replace all other federal income taxes with a 23 percent federal income tax. The DCCC ad omits the fact that it would replace other income taxes.

However, there are questions if a 23 percent federal sales tax would work. Factcheck.org was dubious and says that the 23 percent number was “misleading.”

Washington Post domestic policy reporter Ezra Klein, writing in The American Prospect in 2008, was more colorful.

It would, to be sure, lower the tax burden on those making less than $24,000 a year. It would also lower the tax burden on those making more than $100,000 a year. Guess what happens to those in-between? The magical tax fairy waves her wand and increases their tax burden. That, apparently, is what FairTaxers believe to be unfair about the current system — it rests too lightly on the middle class. Indeed, in their own chartmeant to sell the plan, they subdivide the country into income brackets, the highest of which is “$75,223 and up.” That bracket, then, includes a schoolteacher making $80,000, and it includes billionaires like Warren Buffett, and those making tens of millions a year, like the Yankee’s Alex Rodriguez. As they say, there are lies, damn lies, and then there are FairTax statistics. We live in a country where the top one percent of the country earned more than a fifth of all income in 2005. In that country, rich does not begin at $75,223. Indeed, in 2004, about 60 percent of Americans made between $25,000 and $100,000. I don’t know what you call raising taxes on the great middle, but progressive ain’t it.

“New Mexico voters deserve to know the truth about Steve Pearce’s record and his plans for a 23 percent tax on the food, gas and clothes New Mexicans buy every single day. Steve Pearce is just out of touch with southern New Mexico,” DCCC spokesman Andy Stone said in response to an e-mail request about the ad.

“Once again, Teague is rewarded for his support for the cap and trade energy tax, the failed stimulus and massive debt with misleading ads from Nancy Pelosi and outside liberal groups,” said Pearce campaign spokesman Jason Heffley. “For two months, Teague’s allies have peddled the same unsubstantiated smears in a desperate attempt to save their loyal ‘yes’ man.”

Though Heffley characterizes the ad as a reward for Teague’s cap and trade vote, the DCCC has aired ads that help Democratic candidates who did not vote for cap and trade or health care reform (Teague did not vote for health care reform).

It did that and more, Defenders CEO and President Rodger Schlickeisen told the Independent this week, playing a role in Udall’s victory as well as those of U.S. House candidates Martin Heinrich and Harry Teague, and even aiding the Democratic presidential ticket at a key time.

“We feel pretty good,” said Schlickeisen. The group’s strategy was to focus on one state “where a relatively small group like ours could come come in and try to make a difference,” he said.”It’s played out as planned in New Mexico.”

Schlickeisen told the Independent in late May that Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund would focus its efforts this year on key U.S. Senate races — New Mexico, Colorado and elsewhere. The Senate, he said at the time, “is where environmental legislation goes to die.”

Electing Democrats was seen as a way of improving the defense of conservation-oriented bills and perhaps even achieving the 60-vote margin Democrats need to override Republican filibusters and presidential vetoes, he said.

Defenders’ work in New Mexico was aided by the pitched battle for the GOP nomination between Reps. Heather Wilson and Steve Pearce. Even before the Republican candidate was selected, however, Defenders ran ads saying Wilson and Pearce were “Two wrong for New Mexico.” “They couldn’t respond,” Schlickeisen said of Udall’s prospective opponents. “They were too busy beating up on each other.”

After Pearce won the primary and polls showed Udall with a double-digit lead, Defenders felt confident enough to spread out its effort, Schlickeisen said. “The strategy was to get Udall so far ahead by mid-summer that we could switch to Heinrich, and if we could help out Teague, we would,” he said. “It pretty much played out like we thought.”

While the group ran some advertising for Heinrich late in his campaign against Republican Darren White, mainly it offered use of its canvassers to Democratic candidates statewide, Schlickeisen said. Defenders’ field staff knocked on more than 120,000 doors around New Mexico for the congressional candidates, and thousands more in Colorado for candidates including Udall’s cousin, Mark Udall, who also was running for the U.S. Senate.

One bonus surprise of the Defenders’ political summer was producing an ad that took aim at Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. The graphic TV ad showed a pilot shotgunning a wolf from the air as part of the controversial predator control program Palin supports as governor of Alaska.

Schlickeisen, whose Alaska field office fought that Alaska’s wolf-control program for years and sparred with the Palin administration, said he was stunned when her popularity soared following the Republican National Convention in August. Defenders quickly produced the ad, ran it in several small markets and watched as it went viral on the Internet. Although Palin remained popular with some voters, Schlickeisen said he believes the wolf-kill ad helped turn public opinion against Palin — and McCain for choosing her.

The ad also brought in more than $1 million in donations, he said. That money was used this fall to campaign on behalf of Obama and other Democratic candidates.

The payoff for Defenders’ work came on Election Day, Schlickeisen said. Voters elected both Udalls to the Senate, and Heinrich, Teague and a host of Democratic U.S. House candidates in New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and elsewhere. Together they should make it easier to pass conservation legislation and start tackling what Schlickeisen called the No. 1 environmental issue facing the nation: global warming.

At the same time, there are Bush administration policies that must be overturned or overhauled, which is crucial work, but dwarfed by other challenges, he said. “The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the global financial crisis, health care — somehow global warming has to fit into that, and somehow we’ve got to get his (Obama’s) attention turned toward reversing some of these bad laws,” Schlickeisen said.

While the environmental community is overjoyed at the Election Day outcome, Schlickeisen is quick to point out that there is much work yet to be done. Even with the elections of Obama, the Udalls and other Democrats, he said, conservation groups have their work cut out for them in coming years. “It’s not a gimme by any stretch.”