Is This David Williams/Richie Farmer's First Ad Of The November Elections? Watch Video.

Update: the Courier Journal's Joe Gerth disputes some portions of the ad here.

But as Scott Jennings, David Williams/Richie Farmer campaign manager truthfully and correctly points out, in the excerpted parts posted below, the contents of the ad did indeed come from the Courier Journal. Read it below:

Senate President David Williams’ first Internet ad of the general election gubernatorial campaign uses three quotes — two criticizing Gov. Steve Beshear and the other praising Williams — that it says are from The Courier-Journal when in fact they were written by the paper’s freelance conservative columnist.

The video, which runs more than two minutes and was released Thursday, attacks Beshear for what it claims to be failed leadership.

At one point the words, “Steve Beshear: ‘A Tower of Incompetence,’ ” appear on the screen, and it cites the newspaper, whose editorial board has consistently supported Beshear.

It also quotes the newspaper as saying that Beshear “failed to deliver the only thing he ran on.”

And it says that the newspaper said, “Williams wants Kentucky to join the movement for fiscal sanity.”

In fact, the newspaper’s editorial page has never said any of those things.

The quotes come from a March 15 column by conservative lawyer John David Dyche, whose biweekly column appears on The Courier-Journal’s op-ed page. Dyche is not on the newspaper’s staff. ...

Bennie Ivory, the newspaper’s executive editor, said there are no plans to ask Williams to change the ad.

Williams’ campaign manager, Scott Jennings, argued that the campaign had not misled anyone because, he said, the words appeared in the newspaper.

“The column appeared in the Louisville Courier-Journal, and he is a regular columnist there,” Jennings said.

He also said there was no intent to make it appear the words represented the positions of the newspaper’s editorial board. ...

In the column, Dyche said, “Having failed to deliver the only thing he ran on — more gambling — and without any other significant accomplishment, Beshear is afraid to run for re-election after making the kind of sensible budget reductions the Medicaid mess demands. Thus, his ‘borrow from tomorrow’ gambit places a crown of cynicism atop an already teetering tower of incompetence.”

He also praises Williams, saying, “Williams wants Kentucky to join the movement for fiscal sanity that Republican reformers (and many reformed Republicans) are carrying to Washington, D.C., and state capitals across the country. Beshear personifies business as usual.”