The 30-second spot, slated for heavy repetition on cable television for the next week, links Dougherty to a pending federal investigation and notes that his union has been cited repeatedly for violating federal labor laws.

Dougherty and his campaign aides refused to address the specific charges but attacked Farnese for negative campaigning.

"We expected this sort of mudslinging in lieu of real ideas to move the district forward," campaign manager Brian Hickey said in a prepared statement.

The new ad opens with video of children playing in a sun shower and a logo from Dougherty's campaign.

"John Dougherty's commercials say he'll bring change to the state Senate," the ad says. But then the video dissolves and the children disappear, replaced by Inquirer headlines about federal investigations.

"In reality, Dougherty is under federal investigation," the ad says. "The U.S. attorney says he took illegal payments from a friend indicted for stealing nearly a million dollars from his union."

The ad continues with another Inquirer headline, based on a National Labor Relations Board probe of the union's hardball tactics with local businesses.

"John Dougherty's union has repeatedly been cited for violating labor laws," the ad says. "A federal regulator called Dougherty a master of unlawful conduct, intimidation and coercion. Is that the change you're looking for?"

Dougherty refused to comment on the advertisement, and Hickey said the campaign would not be "dragged down" into discussing the specifics.

The statements in the ad are derived from two major sources: a federal indictment last summer of electrical contractor Donald "Gus" Dougherty, no family relation to the union leader but a longtime friend, and a series of NLRB cases since Dougherty took over the union.

To date, John Dougherty has not been charged with any crimes. But the U.S. Attorney's Office alleged last summer that Gus Dougherty had made two "sweetheart deals" with the union leader, and paid employees in cash to avoid paying taxes and more than $1 million to the union's health and welfare funds.

Specifically, Gus Dougherty was accused of selling a Wildwood condominium to John Dougherty for $20,000 less than its market value and performing $115,000 worth of renovations on his home in Pennsport, submitting an invoice for the work only after Gus Dougherty's offices were searched by federal investigators.

John Dougherty has refused to discuss details of the allegations.

Two weeks ago, the union leader tried to defuse the federal probe as a political issue by having his lawyer, Henry Hockeimer, issue a prepared statement that "John Dougherty has never been, nor is he currently, the target of any investigation."

But in prosecutor's lexicon, "target" is a carefully defined term that typically refers to someone on the verge of indictment.

When reporters asked Hockeimer if Dougherty was the "subject" of a federal investigation, the lawyer declined comment.

Gus Dougherty is scheduled to go on trial May 19 - four weeks after the April 22 Democratic primary election, in which Dougherty faces Farnese and community activist Anne Dicker.

At a pretrial hearing in federal court last week, one of Gus Dougherty's attorneys suggested that his client is prepared to plead guilty to 98 of the 100 counts filed against him, but not the two counts that involve John Dougherty, alleging unlawful payments to a union leader.

The NLRB, which enforces federal labor laws, has repeatedly found Dougherty's union, Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, guilty of illegal organizing and work-related actions.

As recently as last August, a three-member panel including the NLRB's chairman, Robert J. Battista, upheld a ruling by an administrative law judge, who concluded that "the Union's agents have a proclivity to violate the [National Labor Relations] Act to the extent that an extraordinary remedial measure is required."

The judge, Paul Buxbaum, said that the union's record showed "an extensive history of misconduct, an ingrained hostility to the Act's purposes, and a persistent disregard of the remedial measures previously imposed by the [NLRB] and the [U.S. 3rd Circuit] court of appeals." *