New attack ads from Senate candidate Barbara Donno use a liberal dose of artistic license in a bid to tie her opponent, Sen. Craig Johnson, to local school-fund scandals – in which he personally played no evident role.

The Johnson camp, unsurprisingly, is condemning the commercials – which target the incumbent for his affiliation with a Garden City law firm he joined three years ago – as part of a campaign of “sleazy lies and shady tactics.”

Statewide, the stakes in this 7th S.D. firefight are high. In what’s expected to be a Democratic presidential year in New York, Republicans are trying to defend their slim state Senate majority. So each district counts big.

Hostilities in this race are especially intense, and have been simmering for a year and a half.

Weeks after the February 2007 special election that made Johnson the only Democrat among Long Island‘s nine state senators, Republicans in Albany were still steaming.

They fumed about the annoying phone calls of mysterious origin, made supposedly on behalf of the GOP candidate, Maureen O’Connell, during the Super Bowl. They railed about a weird robo-call charging absurdly that O’Connell accepted a contribution from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. They cited a phony flier distorting her stance on abortion.

“It’s a new low in dirty, misleading campaigning,” Sen. Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) – who this summer would become majority leader – told the now-defunct New York Sun. “I’ve never seen such a despicable negative campaign of untruths and lies.”

The Democrats and the Johnson camp denied responsibility for any tricks, dismissing the charges as sour grapes.

Soon, the new incumbent was the targeted by a GOP-created entity called the North Shore Committee for Truth. Later, a slick Republican maneuver knocked Johnson off the Working Families Party ballot line.

More recently, the Johnson camp tracked down and pressed charges against a Donno operative, Vincent Jeffrey, for allegedly stealing Johnson lawn signs. The charges have been dismissed, according to Republican officials.

The latest Donno TV ads escalate the fight. In one, she describes “Johnson’s law firm” as “at the center of a massive IRS and FBI probe.” Johnson joined the Jaspan, Schlesinger firm in 2005, in an of-counsel capacity, after the alleged pension-abuse actions of ex-partner Carol Hoffman took place.

In another ad, Donno plays on the fact that the firm had been hired by the scandal-wracked Roslyn School District a few years ago.

“Of all the law firms in New York, Craig Johnson chose this one,” says the ominous male narrator voice. A Roslyn-related lawsuit is pending, which law-firm partner Steven Schlesinger (who’s also Nassau Democratic committee’s counsel) calls meritless.

The Johnson camp countercharged yesterday that Donno, as Manhasset school board president, “continually rehired … the very accounting firm at the heart of the Roslyn School District scandal.” Her supporters replied that that erupted at the end of her tenure in 2004 – and the firm was widely used by Island districts. Bryan Hurst, spokesman for Donno said: “It is ridiculous on every level to compare what happened at the Roslyn School District … to any other school district in the state, including Manhasset.”

For Donno, the slogan goes: “Now Craig Johnson wants our vote. You’ve got to be kidding.”

In this district, nobody seems to be kidding – Skelos least of all.

Source: Newsday