A new Republican-aligned PAC called Faith and Power has spent $3 million so far on ads praising North Carolina state Sen. Erica Smith and attacking former state Sen. Cal Cunningham ahead of the March 3 Democratic primary, but new campaign finance reports reveal that a very familiar GOP organization is behind the effort.
The Senate Leadership Fund, a powerful super PAC run by allies of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, is responsible for Faith and Power’s entire budget, and its leader acknowledged it was taking action to force national Democrats to spend more on Cunningham. For her part, Smith has spoken out against the GOP for meddling in the Democratic primary to face Republican Sen. Thom Tillis.
So far, the Republican ad campaign doesn’t appear to be enough to undermine Cunningham’s status as the frontrunner against Smith, who has raised very little money herself. A pair of polls released in February showed Cunningham leading 29-10, while a more recent poll from SurveyUSA had him up 42-17.
However, major Democratic groups have indeed invested plenty of money in recent weeks to help Cunningham win. The Charlotte Observer writes that as of Friday, VoteVets and VoteVets Action Fund have spent a total of $7.2 million here, while a new group called Carolina Blue created by a former DSCC staffer has deployed $4.5 million. Carolina Blue uses its new commercial to say that “voters should be reassured” about Cunningham’s progressive policies.
Cunningham has also been spending heavily in the lead up to the primary. The former state senator took in $1.4 million from Jan. 1 to Feb. 12, the time that the FEC defines as the pre-primary period, but he spent a larger $1.6 million and had $1.5 million on-hand. Smith, by contrast, reports that she didn’t spend so much as a penny during this time on anything but a small loan repayment, and she had only $128,000 in the bank.
Cunningham is also out with a new commercial defending his record, a move that came around the same time that Faith and Power launched an ad arguing that only Smith would support progressive priorities in the Senate. Cunningham speaks directly to the camera and says, “I want you to hear directly from me about these deceptive ads attacking my values. They’re just not true.”
Cunningham continues, “They’re paid for by Mitch McConnell’s allies, and it’s the very political corruption I’ll go to Washington to fight.” Cunningham then pledges to “tackle the climate crisis, pass background checks, and make college more affordable.”
If Cunningham wins the nomination next month, he’ll start out with considerably less money than Tillis in this light red state. The incumbent raised $700,000 during the pre-primary period, which is only about half of what Cunningham took in, but Tillis ended Feb. 12 with a hefty $5.4 million war chest.
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