Leading Off:
● NC-Sen: Well, we knew this would happen—it was only a question of when: Republicans have finally started attacking Democrat 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.
Senate:
● LA-Sen: The race to replace retiring Sen. David Vitter has been a chaotic affair, and now Republican Rep. John Fleming, a favorite of outsider groups like the Club for Growth, is hoping to take advantage of that chaos. Following a recent spat between Rep. Charles Boustany and state Treasurer John Kennedy, Fleming is out with one of those commercials that attacks his opponents for attacking one another.
The spot features a cafeteria full of well-dressed men throwing food at one another, as the narrator explains, "First, Kennedy attacks Boustany as a wasteful-spending liberal. Then Kennedy attacks Boustany on character." By contrast, the narrator declares that Fleming "is fighting the real enemy: Obama and Clinton" and praises him for standing with Donald Trump on immigration and terrorism. And of course, by repeating Boustany and Kennedy's charges against one another, Fleming is giving them more oxygen.
Fleming doesn't go into much detail about Kennedy's attacks on Boustany's character, though a newspaper flashes on screen reading, "Kennedy operatives spread Boustany story." A few weeks ago, an investigative journalist named Ethan Brown released a book in which he claimed that Boustany was the client of several prostitutes who were later murdered. (Brown does not allege that Boustany had anything to do with their deaths.) Boustany denied everything and no new information has emerged. However, Kennedy took advantage of the situation to spread the story around while denying he had anything to do with spreading it around.
Boustany was not amused, and he held a press conference bashing Kennedy as "the only candidate who has spread this false story against me." Fleming mostly stayed quiet during all this, so he's hoping that Boustany and Kennedy will just pulverize one another. Senate hopefuls need to win first or second place in November to advance to a likely December runoff (assuming no one takes a majority in the first round) and, aside from a recent Fleming internal, polls consistently show him taking less than 10 percent of the vote. However, there are still plenty of undecideds, and Fleming is relying on his image as a hardcore conservative champion to help him break through.
Kennedy started this race as the best-known candidate, and for a while, polls had him easily taking the top spot November. However, a few recent surveys say that he's in danger of losing a runoff perch altogether, whether it's to Boustany or Fleming, or to Democrats Foster Campbell or Caroline Fayard, though there aren't enough polls out there to get a clear picture of this race.
Kennedy himself went up with a minute-long ad during Monday's New Orleans Saints game that features him talking to the camera and arguing that "we've got too many undeserving people at the top getting bailouts, and we've got too many undeserving people at the bottom getting handouts, and we at the middle get stuck with the bill."
Kennedy goes on to criticize Obama and Congress for doing nothing while incomes were stagnant, saying that "they ought to hide their heads in a bag." The screen actually shows an image of members of Congress' heads being replaced with bags, which may or may not be a reference to how some Saints' fans wore sacks over their heads during the team's awful 1-and-15 1980 season that earned them the nickname "the Aints." (Though it's downright strange if Kennedy is actually comparing Congress to Saints fans.)
Kennedy then promotes himself as someone who can fix the problem because he's "not part of any insider club, and never will be." To prove his point, he announces: "I'd rather drink weed killer." Kennedy has been state treasurer since 2000 and he's run for Senate twice before (as both a Democrat and a Republican), so he's not exactly Mr. Political Outsider. But hey, he's made it this long without chugging Roundup, so he must be okay, right?
All in all, this is a pretty odd ad, and, aside from the last line about weed killer, it's really not all that memorable. But Kennedy's main GOP foes are both House members, so it does make sense that he's contrasting himself with an unpopular Congress, though he doesn't mention or show either Boustany or Fleming on screen.
● PA-Sen: Mercyhurst: Pat Toomey (R-inc) 43, Katie McGinty (D) 42 (42-41 Clinton) (March: 47-34 Toomey). Note that this survey was conducted from Sept. 12-23, which is a very long time for a poll to be in the field.
Gubernatorial:
● MO-Gov: When you're an inexperienced candidate whose main qualifications are raising huge sums of money from sketchballs and blowing shit up on camera, you're bound to make mistakes. But this screwup is particularly awful, even for Republican Eric Greitens.
The image above was shared on the Facebook page of Army veteran Robert Murphy, who stars in Greitens' newest TV ad as the grizzly-voiced narrator of a diatribe against Democrat Chris Koster, whom Greitens is challenging for governor. But Murphy's social media preferences pretty much ensure that now he, rather than Koster, is going to be the story. And that ghastly "rape" post was far from the only revolting piece of garbage Murphy's shared recently:
Other memes Murphy has re-posted in the past year announce, "No to gun control, Yes to Muslim control," and decry having to fear offending "some 7th Century Islamic goat humpers."
Several other memes falsely allege Obama is a Muslim who wasn't born in the United States, including one showing Obama's face on a "wanted" poster with the words: "Missing from Kenya."
Greitens' campaign responded by carping that "Robert Murphy fought for the media's right to write dumb gotcha stories, and for his own free speech right to say things that aren't politically correct, even things others, including Eric, don't agree with," which is the same thing as saying, "We don't really care that our surrogate trivialized rape." But as Kevin McDermott of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch notes, that kind of attitude didn't exactly help another Missouri Republican—a guy you all know named Todd Akin.
House:
● AZ-02: On behalf of GOP Rep. Martha McSally, WPA Opinion Research is out with a poll giving her a huge 56-37 lead over Democrat Matt Heinz. The sample gives Donald Trump a 43-38 edge in this Tucson seat. Romney won 50-48 here and polls consistently show Trump doing considerably worse than Romney statewide, so this sample is probably a bit too red. Unfortunately, it doesn't sound like Heinz has much better numbers lying around somewhere. Heinz's spokeswoman suggested that this poll's demographics "must be incredibly skewed," but she didn't provide any pushback beyond that.
According to our House ad reservations tracker, neither the DCCC nor House Majority PAC has reserved any TV time in this seat, a good indication that they don't think this race is competitive right now. If Heinz has a poll that shows him with a path to victory, it's in his best interest to release it to encourage outside Democratic groups to spend on his behalf, especially since early voting will start in a few weeks. However, his campaign's response to this McSally poll doesn't have us holding our breath. Daily Kos Elections rates this seat as Likely Republican.
● CO-06: In early August, Republican Rep. Mike Coffman ran an attention-grabbing commercial where he pledged to stand up to either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. However, Coffman had no exit strategy and he soon found himself in trouble when he admitted that he hadn't actually ruled out voting for Trump. Colorado's 6th District is the type of well-off and well-educated area where Trump smells like electoral rat poison, so we know why Coffman is trying to distance himself from his party's nominee. But Democrat Morgan Carroll is trying to make sure that he fails.
Carroll is out with a new commercial explicitly linking the top of the ticket to the bottom. The narrator argues that Trump wants to defund Planned Parenthood, while saying that Coffman actually did vote to defund it six times. The spot then shows a clip of Trump declaring that immigrants are "bringing drugs" and "they're rapists," before the narrator says Coffman told immigrants to "pull out a dictionary." And no, that Coffman quote was not taken out of context. The ad also assails Coffman for saying nothing when Trump mocked a disabled reporter.
But perhaps the most dangerous part of the ad for Coffman comes at the end, when the narrator points out that Trump has questioned Barack Obama's birthplace before an audio clip plays of Coffman says that the president is "just not an American." That's a reference to a 2012 incident where Coffman shoved both feet in his mouth and bit down hard:
"I don't know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. I don't know that. But I do know this, that in his heart, he's not an American. He's just not an American."
Coffman went on to claim he misspoke and said he apologized, but he added, "I don't believe the president shares my belief in American Exceptionalism." Some apology. Coffman did win re-election 48-46 that year as Obama was carrying his seat 52-47 so these stories, while problematic, weren't quite bad enough to sink him. However, Carroll has much more money to make her case against Coffman than did Joe Miklosy, Coffman's opponent in 2012. And Carroll, of course, also has something else Miklosy didn't have: Donald Trump.
This particular spot has the right idea, particularly in its usage of actual footage of Trump and Coffman. However, it feels a little overstuffed, and future ads could benefit from focusing on just one or two key points, particularly birtherism. After all, it's been four long years since most voters have heard anything about Coffman's comments about Obama, and they could use more of a refresher than a brief (and not particularly clear) audio clip of Coffman talking. And with Trump doing his best to make sure his racist crusade stays in the headlines, a commercial that simply portrays him and Coffman as bosom-birthers could resonate more than a spot that just throws Trump Tower's kitchen sink at Coffman.
● MI-01: The NRCC is out with another commercial that insists that Democrat Lon Johnson is lying in his ads, though they make their argument in a very strange way. This time, they take issue with a spot where Johnson pledged to protect the Second Amendment, arguing that Johnson backs "Obama's radical anti-gun agenda" and "said he would fight to make anti-gun proposals law, taking away your rights, safety, and freedom."
The narrator doesn't go into any detail about what kind of policies Johnson actually supports, simply hoping the audience agrees he's an Obama clone. But in a truly bizarre move, most of the ad features a picture of Johnson, the man the NRCC wants northern Michigan voters to think is an anti-gun fanatic, comfortably slinging his rifle behind his back. That image does not at all jell with the GOP's message. If the NRCC winds up changing this ad, it's because we just did them the favor of pointing out what gobsmacking idiots they are.
● NY-22: The contest for this open Utica seat is one of the few races that features an influential independent candidate. While a recent DCCC poll argued that rich guy Martin Babinec is drawing equal support from Democrat Kim Myers and Republican Claudia Tenney, Babinec has pledged to caucus with Team Red if he wins. Democratic ads have concentrated on attacking Tenney and so far have ignored Babinec, but the GOP has apparently decided that Babinec is costing Tenney more support than he's costing Myers.
A few weeks ago, Tenney ran a commercial portraying Babinec as a liberal, and the NRCC is now out with a spot going after both Myers and Babinec. The narrator argues that both of them are millionaires whose businesses hurt American jobs.
● NY-24: Republican Rep. John Katko recently ran a spot that featured Democrat Colleen Deacon awkwardly answering a question about how she would fight terrorism, and the NRCC does the same thing in their new ad. After the customary fear-mongering over ISIS, the GOP plays that clip of Deacon saying, "Um, fighting ISIS, obviously, I don't know what the answer is," before the narrator insists Deacon backs the Iran nuclear deal. The ad concludes with that same clip of Deacon again before the narrator insists the Democrat "doesn't have a clue."
But as the Auburn Citizen notes, and as we pointed out when the original Katko ad dropped, Team Red clipped this excerpt from a much longer Deacon answer. Right after the bit quoted above, Deacon said, "But I do know we need to have a strategy moving forward that works with our allies—and a united front that is smart—to eliminate the terrorists and the terrorist threats that we have, not only to potentially America but all over the world." Of course, the GOP isn't going to let a little thing like context stop them from portraying Deacon as utterly clueless based off one misleadingly edited line.
● WI-08: The NRCC's new spot argues that Democrat Tom Nelson raised taxes and took pay raises, and they also accuse him of having "padded his pockets during the financial crisis." This ad comes over a month after Republican Mike Gallagher released a poll giving himself a 52-36 lead over Nelson. Nelson's own campaign didn't release contradictory numbers, and they even admitted that, "After spending nearly $1 million on TV ads, radio ads, digital ads and stuffing mailboxes to win a primary, we would be shocked if Mike Gallagher wasn't in the lead."
We haven't seen any contradictory data in the ensuing month. However, there's no indication that either party has scaled back their spending in this Green Bay seat. The DCCC and House Majority PAC have been airing ads from their total $964,000 reservation, and the NRCC continues to run commercials from their own $1.3 million reservation; another GOP group, the Congressional Leadership Fund, also has committed $637,000 here. At the very least, it's a clear sign that neither side thinks that Gallagher has the insurmountable edge that his poll suggested he has.
Ad Roundup:
● FL-Sen: GOP Sen. Marco Rubio again attacks Democrat Patrick Murphy over his alleged résumé inflation and in a separate spot, cites a flawed study to claim he was one of the least effective members of Congress. The Senate Leadership Fund blasts Murphy for supporting the Iran nuclear deal. The NRA hits Murphy for saying he didn't think Hillary Clinton did "anything wrong" with regard to Benghazi. Murphy's first Spanish ad slams Rubio as "reckless" on reproductive health, repeatedly using a clip of the senator saying he believes in a ban on abortions without exceptions for rape or incest.
● IN-Sen: The Senate Leadership Fund uses clips of a semi-outraged Rachel Maddow declaring that Democrat Evan Bayh was a "lobbyist," presumably to demoralize liberal voters. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce says Bayh cast the deciding vote for Obamacare, but says that GOP Rep. Todd Young is fighting the program.
● MO-Sen: Democrat Jason Kander features a self-described owner of a "family business" slamming GOP Sen. Roy Blunt for his pre-occupation with his family business, i.e., the fact that his wife and three kids are all lobbyists.
● NH-Sen: Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte notes that she was her state's "first female attorney general" and insists that she supports "equal pay" and "expand[ed] access to birth control." Too bad her party doesn't. The Senate Leadership Fund (via the "Granite State Solutions PAC") goes kitchen-sink on Democrat Maggie Hassan, attacking her on spending, the Iran nuclear deal, and sanctuary cities.
● NV-Sen: The NRA is spending $1 million on a one-week buy to argue Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto would be an anti-gun Harry Reid clone. For the Senate Leadership Fund, a retired police detective expresses anger at Cortez Masto for blaming local law enforcement for the rape-kit backlog that Republicans have worked very hard to pin on her.
● PA-Sen: Democrat Katie McGinty goes positive, pointing to her background as the ninth of 10 kids as the reason why she supports tax cuts for the middle class. Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, meanwhile, claims that he's the one in favor of tax breaks but says McGinty supports them (and sanctuary cities, an issue he's been trying hard to make happen). Toomey also claims McGinty became a millionaire by working as "a lobbyist at a Washington firm that defends polluters." The Senate Leadership Fund (those guys again) piles on to accuse McGinty of being a corrupt self-dealer who tried to benefit herself through her government work.
● WI-Sen: For Democrat Russ Feingold, a series of regular Wisconsinites all slam GOP Sen. Ron Johnson for shipping jobs overseas and helping rich guys like himself.
● CA-24: The NRCC argues that Democrat Salud Carbajal voted to raise other people's taxes while failing to properly pay his own.
● CA-26: In her first ad, Democratic Rep. Julia Brownley talks about her work helping military families.
● CA-52: In her first general election ad, Republican Denise Gitsham delivers some very vague statements about how career politics suck and she's different. Gitsham used to work for Karl Rove, which of course she doesn't mention in this spot, though she does declare that "San Diego needs a representative from the American side of the beltway."
● CO-03: In her first ad, Democrat Gail Schwartz tells the audience how she lost her young daughter in a car accident, but she fought to be able to stand up again when she was told her she'd never walk. Schwartz goes on to say that she stood up for schools, and she will stand up to Republican Rep. Scott Tipton to "stop him from selling off our public lands."
● CO-06: Democrat Morgan Carroll highlights her work helping an ill single mother who was at risk of losing everything.
● FL-13: In their first ad of the contest, House Majority PAC ties Republican Rep. David Jolly to Donald Trump, arguing they are both a threat to women's health.
● FL-18: The NRCC contrasts Republican Brian Mast with Democrat Randy Perkins. The narrator says that Mast, a veteran who lost both his legs in Afghanistan, put "service before self." The NRCC then argues that Perkins got rich after hurricanes hit communities and "had subcontractors do the [cleanup] work. Pays them a fraction, keeps millions for himself." Perkins runs a disaster relief company, and this spot doesn't actually accuse him of doing anything illegal. However, as this ad demonstrates, the NRCC doesn't really need to do much work to make Perkins' whole line of work sound icky.
● IA-01: The NRCC argues that Democrat Monica Vernon took taxpayer-funded salary increases and helped developers who donated to her campaign.
● ME-02: Democrat Emily Cain has two new ads (here and here). The first features a group of loggers criticizing Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin for making millions on Wall Street, then "abusing the Tree Growth Program to pay just $21 in taxes on his oceanfront estate." They also argue that the Tree Growth Program "should be helping loggers, not Wall Street millionaires," and suggest that "the Paul Bunyan Statue has cut down more trees than Poliquin," and "probably pays more taxes, too."
We had some issues with a recent Cain ad that also tried to portray Poliquin as hostile to rural Maine, which we didn't feel did a good job making a clear argument against Poliquin. However, this is a much stronger commercial that does a good job making the case that Poliquin has abused the system to make himself rich at the expense of regular people. (And the bit at the end with the Paul Bunyan Statue is funny.) Cain's other new spot is positive, and pledges that she will fight unfair trade deals that would cost Maine jobs.
● MN-02: Last week, the DCCC went up with a spot against Republican Jason Lewis. The commercial is not online, but CBS Minnesota has a copy of the script. The DCCC does not fuck around, and they waste no time not only tying Lewis to Donald Trump, they use some of the former conservative radio host's worst quotes against him, including, "Of course I have the right to shoot an unarmed man," and "The vast majority of young, single women — they are non-thinking." This is a well-educated and affluent seat where Trump is unlikely to be anything but a liability, and connecting Lewis and Trump should be an effective tactic.
● MN-03: The DCCC also began running a commercial against Republican Rep. Erik Paulsen last week that is not currently online. The ad argues that both Donald Trump and the congressman are against equal pay, want to defund Planned Parenthood, and want to punish women who get abortions. This is another suburban seat where Trump is likely to cause the GOP problems downballot, though unlike Jason Lewis in MN-02, Paulsen is an incumbent who has easily won re-election here over the years.
● NE-02: The NRCC continues to argue that Democratic Rep. Brad Ashford is weak on national security, this time blaming him for allowing Guantanamo Bay detainees to be released.
● NV-03: Republican Danny Tarkanian features a woman praising him for raising awareness about pediatric strokes, noting that both their children have suffered from strokes. In her first ad, Democrat Jacky Rosen highlights her work as a programmer and a synagogue president in finding smart solutions. Rosen specifically cites how her synagogue created one of Nevada's largest solar projects.
● NY-19: End Citizens United is up with a $230,000 buy in the Albany and Utica markets, bypassing the ultra-expensive New York City market where half the district lives. Their spot argues that Democrat Zephyr Teachout has stood up for the middle class and against powerful special interests.
● PA-08: Republican Brian Fitzpatrick talks about his law enforcement background, and calls for "tougher sentences for heroin dealers" as well as more funding for both drug education and treatment for addicts. The NRCC attacks Democrat Steve Santarsiero on taxes.
● PA-16: In her first ad, Democrat Christina Hartman talks about her work "negotiating for human rights, building strong democracies, and giving a voice to the most vulnerable." She then argues that Republican Lloyd Smucker used his power "to oppose a woman's right to choose, and to stand in the way of good jobs here at home, all the while standing up for Donald Trump."
Romney carried this Lancaster County seat 52-46 and it has a lower proportion of residents with a college degree (though the median income is close to the national average), so it's not clear that this will be an area that will vote against Trump. However, Hartman probably isn't winning this ancestrally red seat unless Trump craters here, so it makes sense that she's tying Smucker to the Donald.
● WA-07: State Sen. Pramila Jayapal, who is running in the all-Democratic general election for this Seattle seat, is out with her first ad since the early August top two primary. Jayapal highlights her focus on fighting climate change, complete with a dramatic shot of a collapsing iceberg at the beginning.
The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, and James Lambert.
