Ad Roundup:
• FL-Sen: In this animated spot, AFSCME and the American Federation of Teachers attack Republican Sen. Marco Rubio over his support for Social Security cuts, Medicare privatization, and abolishing the Department of Education. The two unions are putting $1.3 million behind the ad and it will run through the end of September.
• MO-Sen: Republican Sen. Roy Blunt speaks directly to the camera, touting his bipartisan bona fides and accomplishments with several Democratic senators. Blunt of course doesn’t mention that these were far from the biggest or most divisive issues, on which he almost always votes the party line. Meanwhile, Blunt’s allies at the Senate Leadership Fund attack Democrat Jason Kander as a career politician and libruhl boogeyman who just loves high taxes.
• NC-Sen: EMILY’s List is putting $2 million behind a spot attacking Republican Sen. Richard Burr for repeatedly voting to raise his own pay, pointing out that his net worth increased five-fold during his 20 years in Congress. They further note he voted against a ban on insider trading by members of Congress and even called the measure “a waste of time.”
• NH-Sen: The NRSC attacks Democrat Maggie Hassan over her handling of the state’s opioid abuse crisis, with a woman named Susan who lost her son to an overdose castigating Hassan for not doing her job as governor.
A related NRSC spot uses a similar framing to portray Hassan as “either corrupt … or inept” over her handling of the New Hampshire Hospital. The NRSC notes she awarded the company Dartmouth-Hitchcock a $36 million dollar contract to provide health services after receiving campaign donations from executives, and they laid off hundreds shortly thereafter, potentially endangering its ability to live up to its commitments.
However, Dartmouth-Hitchcock’s was the only bid, and as Hassan’s campaign has noted, the contract went through the normal procurement process and received unanimous support from even the Republican-majority Executive Council, which can veto important budgetary matters in New Hampshire. Even so, attacks like this can stick if they aren’t forcefully responded to.
From the other side, Democrat Maggie Hassan promotes her record as a business-friendly governor with a record of fiscal responsibility and working across party lines.
• PA-Sen: Republican Sen. Pat Toomey tries to paint himself as above the political fray, working across the aisle with Democrats on issues like background checks for gun buyers, while attacking Democrat Katie McGinty as a partisan insider with ethics issues.
• AZ-02: Democrat Matt Heinz uses his first general election ad to show a doctor excoriating Republican Rep. Martha McSally for voting six times to defund Planned Parenthood, noting that millions of women rely on it for treatments like cancer screenings. Heinz, who is also a doctor, uses that as his title rather than saying he’s a former state representative.
• IA-01: House Majority PAC attacks Republican Rep. Rod Blum for supporting trade deals and tax breaks that benefit big corporations that ship jobs overseas.
• MN-03: Republican Rep. Erik Paulsen tars Democrat Terri Bonoff as a stereotypical tax-and-spend liberal, literally employing the phrase “A billion dollar tax increase … a billion, with a ‘B’” without a hint of pop culture awareness.
• MT-AL: Democrat Denise Juneau features little kids saying they what they want to do when they grow up, which Juneau uses to highlight her efforts as Montana’s education chief to get schools to prepare students for good jobs in fields like medicine or engineering.
• NV-04: The DCCC has an elderly veteran taking Republican Rep. Cresent Hardy to task for wanting to raise the retirement age to 75 and calling the disabled “a drain on society.” They then link Hardy’s disrespectfulness to Donald Trump’s, with a clip of Trump’s infamous insult that John McCain wasn’t a war hero because he was captured.
• NY-24: Democrat Colleen Deacon ties Republican Rep. John Katko to national Republicans and says both are bad for women. She attacks Katko over voting to defund Planned Parenthood after promising he wouldn’t, and also for wanting to ban abortion.
• PA-08: If it’s another Republican ad attacking a Democratic legislator, it’s a good bet that it’s over taxes. Defending Mainstreet uses a Santa Claus setup to hit Democrat Steve Santarsiero as a “bad Santa” who wants billions in higher taxes and presumably didn’t make the cut to star in the Billy Bob Thornton sequel this November.