• AZ-Sen: Republican Sen. John McCain is out with a Spanish spot where a family praises him as a “hero of Arizona.”
• LA-Sen: Ending Spending talks up Republican John Kennedy’s record as state treasurer. So far, the group appears to have put just $75,000 behind the ad.
• NV-Sen: Republican Joe Heck is going negative for the first time (though outside groups on both sides have been running negative commercials here for months). He argues that, while he served in Iraq, Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto took luxurious overseas trips that were funded by special interests and taxpayers.
• OH-Sen: Republican Sen. Rob Portman spends $250,000 on a commercial where the senator, speaking in Spanish, talks about jobs. Fighting for Ohio drops another $1.1 million arguing once again that Democrat Ted Strickland was a sucky governor.
• PA-Sen: The DSCC once again argues that Republican Sen. Pat Toomey is in the pocket of Wall Street, while the narrator praises Democrat Katie McGinty as a defender of the middle class.
• MT-Gov: The RGA continues to tie Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock to Hillary Clinton, arguing that they both have deleted emails.
The narrator is referring to a recent news story where the founder of a ski resort tried to get emails from Bullock’s time as state attorney general, only to be told that the emails no longer exist. The state Department of Administration says that nothing is amiss, and that it’s “ordinary procedure when an employee terminates employment from a branch or agency or moves between branches or agencies to terminate their email account.” However, the RGA’s narrator insists at the end of the commercial that “[i]f Hillary is wrong, Steve Bullock can’t be right.”
• VT-Gov: Through their group Our Vermont, the DGA argues that Republican Phil Scott wants to cut taxes on the rich and raise it on the middle class.
• AZ-02: Republican Martha McSally says she successfully fought to end a policy that required American servicewomen to wear Muslim garb, and is standing up to her party on equal pay for women.
• IA-03: Democrat Jim Mowrer’s wife describes how he went back to Iraq even though his son was just born.
• IL-12: Democrat C.J. Baricevic says that Republican Rep. Mike Bost voted for the fast track of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, while Baricevic says he’ll stand up for American jobs.
• ME-02: Democrat Emily Cain argues that Republican Bruce Poliquin is hostile to campers and thus, to rural Maine, though the message is delivered in a very unpersuasive way. It begins with one camper referring to an old story where Poliquin reportedly looked at a campground and declared, “These are not my kind of people,” though there’s no video or audio of this remark. (It’s just a recollection by a Poliquin neighbor of an incident that allegedly took place back in 2000.) Another camper replies that Poliquin is in the pocket of Wall Street.
The main problem with the commercial is the dialog between the campers is very unnatural. Can you imagine an actual couple having a conversation where one of them declared, “Well, Poliquin made millions on Wall Street. And he’s taken so much money from special interests that people are calling him ‘Wall Street’s champion’ ”? It also doesn’t help that, besides the old Poliquin quote, the spot doesn’t really do anything to persuade the audience that the congressman has it in for rural Maine.
If the spot had focused on some Poliquin votes that hurt the middle class or northern Maine in particular, that would be more effective. But the argument that Poliquin once lightly dissed campers and took a lot of money from special interests isn’t, by itself, very persuasive.
• MI-07: Republican Rep. Tim Walberg argues that Democrat Gretchen Driskell missed road funding votes to raise money with Nancy Pelosi, and goes on to say that she backs Pelosi’s “liberal agenda.”
• NY-01: Democrat Anna Throne-Holst says that Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin is in the pocket of the NRA and lied when he said that he pushed a bill to make it tougher for terrorists to get guns.
• NY-03: Democrat Tom Suozzi and his daughter says that the candidate has always stood up for what was right, even if it meant taking on his own party. Republican Jack Martins talks about helping families.
• NY-19: Republican John Faso features retiring Rep. Chris Gibson vouching for him.
• TX-23: The NRCC says that Democrat Pete Gallego became a lobbyist after losing in 2014, though they don’t go into much detail.
• VA-05: Democrat Jane Dittmar says that Republican Tom Garrett is in the pocket of Dominion Power and put communities at risk.
• WI-08: Republican Mike Gallagher emphasizes his career in the Marines.