Well, we knew this would happen—it was only a question of when: Republicans have finally started attacking Democratic Senate candidate Deborah Ross in earnest over her advocacy as head of the North Carolina ACLU, a post she left 14 years ago. In particular, new ads from both GOP Sen. Richard Burr and the Senate Leadership Fund slam Ross for a memo she wrote in the mid-1990s raising questions about the state's sex offender registry. Burr's spot features a Marine Corps veteran and rape survivor who says Ross "wants to protect sexual predators over victims." The SLF ad, meanwhile, castigates Ross for putting her "left-wing ideas ahead of our families' safety" and claims Ross "repeatedly objected to making the sex-offender database publicly available."
Those certainly seem like they could be devastating lines of attack, but at least we know that Ross was completely prepared for this day. In a very effective response ad, Ross features former state Sen. Fountain Odom, who identifies himself as "the sponsor of the law creating the sex-offender registry," and adds that "Deborah Ross helped me," praising her for making the law stronger. Odom blasts Burr for "flat-out lying" about Ross's views and slams the senator for voting "against funding the federal sex-offender registry." Ross wisely focuses on the work she did on behalf of the law and avoids repeating the GOP’s attacks against her, and Odom's emphatic, sincere delivery, combined with his soft drawl, make him a perfect messenger.
The question, of course, is which message voters hear more—and which they wind up believing. In a recent piece in the National Journal written just before these new ads came out, Andrea Drusch observed that "the sex offender registry hasn't been the weapon that Republicans had hoped," at least not yet, and she suggests that the full-throated support of guys like Fountain is part of the reason why. One unnamed Republican operative claims there's more material on Ross from her time at the ACLU that hasn't been deployed yet, but let's see if this initial salvo gains traction first.
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