Ogonowski takes a jab at Kerry in the first TV ad of campaign

By John C. Drake, Globe Staff

Senator John F. Kerry apparently hasn't visited enough coffee shops in Massachusetts.

At least he hasn't been to the ones his Republican challenger Jim Ogonowski visited in a listening tour of the state, as highlighted in the first television ad of Ogonowski's long-shot campaign to unseat the four-term Democratic incumbent.

The folksy ad, released today, features Ogonowski driving himself around Massachusetts going "from coffee shop to coffee shop" to hear voters' concerns.

He then features patrons' puzzled expressions when he asks them if Kerry has ever been in the coffee shop.

One woman's response: "John who?"

The Ogonowski campaign, which reported raising more than $300,000 in the first quarter of the year, would not say how much it was spending on the ad buy. Ogonowski is a Dracut hay farmer who is the brother of an airline pilot lost in the Sept. 11 attacks. He narrowly lost a congressional race to Democrat Niki Tsongas last fall.

A spokesman for Kerry, who was the Democratic nominee for president in 2004, called the ad "fiction" and provided a list of four dozen appearances by the junior senator at Massachusetts events so far in 2008. There did not appear to be any coffee shops on the list.

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