After reading Sunday's IR State Bureau report about attack mailers sent out by obscure groups against selected legislative candidates in the days prior to last month's primary election, it isn't difficult to figure out why Rep. John Ward, R-Helena, called them "sleaze."

One of the mailers, illustrated Sunday, accused Ward of wanting to coddle the likes of child-killer Nathaniel Bar-Jones and "killer clown" John Wayne Gacy because Ward voted to bring a bill to eliminate Montana's death penalty to the House floor.

Such over-the-top histrionics is indeed sleaze, but a larger question is just how effective such mailers really are. One would like to think they would backfire, turning off more primary voters than they convince. Obviously some voters are going to think there might be some fire causing all of that smoke, but surely more would be offended to see that sort of thing turning up in their mailboxes.

In addition, in some cases the "outside help" wasn't needed in the first place. For instance, the effort to attack incumbent state Rep. Ed Butcher's opponent had to be a waste of money. His deeply rural district has consistently favored the far-right thinking Butcher anyway. And in the Helena district won by Sen. Christine Kaufmann, a Democrat, monetary help from outside liberal groups also was beside the point. Most precincts in her district routinely give about 65 percent of their votes to the most liberal candidate they can find on the ballot. Kaufmann never was in any danger of losing, either.

It no doubt is true that the attacks had an effect on the races in which three Republican incumbents -- Ward, Bruce Malcolm of Emigrant and Carol Lambert of Broadus -- were defeated. But for the most part, we hope that last-minute smear campaigns by nameless outsiders not only fall on deaf ears, but stir up enough righteous indignation to bite the hand doing the smearing.