By Alex Roarty
PoliticsPA
roarty@politicspa.com

Democrat governor hopeful Dan Onorato’s campaign on Thursday began using Google ads to highlight Republican opponent Tom Corbett’s comments on unemployed workers, a medium seen mostly as a tool to rally the party faithful.

The ads are ubiquitous across the Internet and are a now common-place tactic used by campaigns. A reporter saw them featured on the popular Pennsylvania political Web site grassrootspa.com, which uses Google display ads but does not control which specific ones appear.

“The jobs are there … people don’t want to come back to work,” the ad quotes Corbett as saying, before directing them to a new Web site from the Onorato campaign designed around the remark.

Corbett made the remark last Friday while relating what he said many business owners had told him. His campaign has since said the attorney general understands many of the unemployed are working hard to find jobs, but the comments have nonetheless ignited a firestorm of controversy in what is clearly the race’s biggest moment to date.

Google ads are typically seen as a good way to talk to a party’s base, usually for fundraising. But Corbett’s comments, if nothing else, have fired up the state party’s faithful, many of whom were ambivalent about the Corbett-Onorato matchup only a week ago.

The Democratic gubernatorial nominee has pressed the issue on Corbett’s remarks all week, holding press conferences each day in a different part of the state to highlight them.