Rep. Dave Reichert's (R-Auburn) re-election campaign responded last night to the latest advertisement paid for by his opponent Darcy Burner's (D-Carnation) campaign. The ad questions Reichert's effectiveness in Congress based on non-partisan power rankings and the amount of bills he has passed during his four years in Washington, D.C.

Reichert's people are saying that the ad's attacking tone shows Burner as too ideological, and suggest that his legislative ideology does not mesh well with the methodology in the study Burner cites.

Still, Burner's camp stood by their numbers, and suggested their sturdy response shows that his congressional record is one of Reichert's biggest weaknesses in the race.

"It's clear from the ad she ran today that Darcy Burner has little regard for the truth," said campaign spokesperson Amanda Halligan. "The fact is, her case for election is weak. What she's selling is the same partisan negativity that demonstrates precisely what's wrong with Congress today - and people aren't buying. The challenges facing this country are too great to approach from a narrow-minded, me-first perspective. After losing last cycle and losing the primary this cycle, the only hope she has is to distort Dave Reichert's record. But the people in the Eighth are smarter than that. They know Dave, and they know what he's done for this community." 

The campaign felt strongly enough about the issue to place a video response on their website, with campaign manager Mike Shields explaining their side of the issue. They say that Reichert has passed 8 bills, 9 amendments, and 2 resolutions, more than half of which were done under a Democratic majority.

Reached for comment, the Burner campaign said their statistics were correct, and proposed that non-partisan groups like Congress.org and Govtrack.us have more credibility on bill passage ability than a campaign whose goal is re-electing Rep. Reichert. They also cited the fact that Reichert's own campaign, as recently as April, cited Congress.org's ratings from his freshman year, when Republicans were in the majority.