Alaska Sen. Mark Begich Retracts Controversial Ad

Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Begich is retracting a television ad that an Alaska family said was exploiting a tragedy for political purposes, according to KTVA in Anchorage.

The controversy began Friday when Begich published a TV spot which blamed his opponent, former state attorney general Dan Sullivan, for reducing the sentence of Jerry Active, a 25-year-old man accused of murdering an Anchorage couple and sexually assaulting their 2-year-old granddaughter on May 25, 2013.

In a rebuttal ad, Sullivan vehemently denied Begich’s accusation, pointing out that he was not attorney general in Jan. 2009 when Active committed a series of crimes for which he should have been sentenced to at least eight years in prison.

Instead, a state database search failed to find that Active had a previous felony which would have triggered the minimum sentence.

The Begich-Sullivan volley angered the victims’ family. Bryon Collins, the family’s attorney, requested that both campaigns pull their ads and remove any references to the case. He said that the family feared that media spotlight on the case could potentially taint a jury pool when Active eventually goes to trial.

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