STATION PULLS AD CRITICAL OF PATAKI

ALBANY -- Gov. George Pataki got a television advertisement slamming
his drug policy pulled because of inaccuracies, but the group that
produced the ad said the governor is just trying to silence critics.

Pataki communications director Mike McKeon complained of errors in the
ad running on Univision, the biggest Spanish-speaking television
station in New York City. In response, the station stopped running the
ad.

The Drug Policy Alliance, however, said the mistake in the ad was
minor.

The incident "shows to me they're committed to not having any
criticism of Pataki in the Latino community," said Deborah Small,
public policy director for the alliance.

"I think they were looking for an excuse to get it off the air. The
overall message of the ad is true," Small said.

Pataki has worked hard this election year to court Hispanic voters by
traveling to the Caribbean and highlighting issues such as education,
health care and drug-law reform.

Critics, though, said his plan for reforming the state's strict drug
laws is ineffective and too mild.

The ad said Pataki's proposal would not help "thousands of New Yorkers
(who) have a family member serving obligatory minimum sentences of 30
years."

The Pataki administration said the claim was wrong on several counts.
The minimum sentence for top drug offenders under the Rockefeller-era
laws is 15 years to life and less than 600 people in prison are
serving time for the top charge, McKeon said.

He also said almost all of those people could apply to judges for
release under Pataki's drug-law proposal.

"The ad was blatantly untrue," McKeon said.

Small acknowledged the ad should have said people were serving
sentences "up to" 30 years, but those words weren't clearly audible in
the Spanish-language version of the ad. She said the ad was otherwise
correct.

Pataki's political operation has been accused of pressuring another
New York City station not to run an ad critical of the governor's
record on campaign-finance reform. And his political opponents,
including Democratic state Comptroller Carl McCall and Independence
Party founder Thomas Golisano, said Pataki workers have threatened
people or promised them favors to stop them from supporting or giving
money to his opponents.

Pataki has denied all those charges. And McCall and Golisano have not
produced any proof of their accusations.

"We're just asking people to be honest," McKeon said. "We appreciate
an open and honest debate on Rockefeller drug laws."

A spokesman for Univision said the station wasn't pressured and has in
the past pulled other ads with errors.

"There were inaccuracies in the commercial," said Ted Faraone. "This
is the same kind of treatment that, say, Nissan would get if it did an
ad that made (false) claims about Toyota."