Texas Is Campaign Issue in California Ads

By JESSE McKINLEY
NYT

SAN FRANCISCO — In baseball, the San Francisco Giants and the Texas Rangers will meet in the World Series beginning Wednesday. In politics, California and the Lone Star State have been battling for a while.

At stake are both old-fashioned bragging rights and the fate of more specific issues, like California’s landmark 2006 law that set limits on greenhouse gas emissions. A ballot measure next week would effectively suspend the law, if passed.

Much of the financial support for the measure, which is on the ballot as Proposition 23, has come from Texas-based oil companies. And those companies have become the target of an in-your-face advertising campaign against the proposition.

In one commercial, a man is seen tied to a chair in a darkened room, surrounded by a number of sinister characters. A caption identifies the bad guys as “Texas Oil;” the bound man — played by the actor David Arquette — is labeled “California.”

“So are you going to vote yes on Prop 23?” one of the bad guys says.

(More here.)