The shadow political attacks that have come to characterize the presidential and statewide races have now penetrated all the way down into the Tampa City Council races, in District 4 where incumbent John Dingfelder is in a dogfight with challenger Julie Brown. (Not to be confused with this Julie Brown. Or Downtown Julie Brown.)

"Election Watch — Florida" is the name of the organization that mailed an attack ad to homes in South Tampa this week claiming that "John Dingfelder likes to raise our taxes again, and again, and again …" The direct mail piece cites four examples of his "tax" raising propensities. The problem, however, is that in two of those four examples they weren't taxes (the amount the city charges its water customers and the reimbursement it makes developers pay as the result of their impact on our already clogged roads); the third cites a property tax vote in which Dingfelder was actually one of two ringleaders in cutting the city's tax rate; and the fourth claim, about the city budget increasing by more than $100 million over the past four years, which is correct.

The mailer appears to be the work of Jack Hebert, who runs a Republican consulting firm called The Mallard Group. You may remember this firm from its  attacks on behalf of Florida Senate primary loser Frank Farkas in 2006. Or for advising former Pinellas-Pasco judge John Renke in his 2002 campaign, for which Renke was removed from office.

Election Watch — Florida is an Electioneering Communications Organization, or ECO, Florida's answer to the federal 527 groups like the Swift Boat Veterans. One lawmaker I spoke to called ECOs an "evisceration" of campaign finance laws. You can read more about them here.

Election Watch is funded by Humana, Gulfstream Park horse racing, Lakeland high-speed rail advocate Charles Dockery and another shadow group, Floridians for a Stronger Florida (a creation of Florida's trial lawyers), according to its last report, filed at the end of 2006. Its spring 2007 report may reveal just who exactly is paying for this attack on Dingfelder.

This story is developing …

This article appears in Feb 28 – Mar 6, 2007.