AL-Sen: Sen. Richard Shelby has been here before. In 2010, at the dawn of the rage-a-holic tea party insurgency, Shelby spent millions to ensure that a no-name opponent wouldn't trouble him in the GOP primary. Unlike fellow establishment-minded senators such as Utah's Bob Bennett and Alaska's Lisa Murkowski, who fell to intra-party challengers fueled by outsider anger, Shelby won comfortably. So it only make sense that he'd once again take precautions against another primary opponent this year.
But the numbers look a bit different this time. Six years ago, Shelby shelled out less than $3 million to knock out tea partier Clint Moser—no small sum, but this cycle, he's already spent an incredible $6 million on just a pair of television ads that ran during two major college football games (the Cotton Bowl and the national championship), when TV time is at a premium.
Those aren't the only numbers that have changed. Moser, it appears, didn't raise so much as a farthing. In fact, he seems to have never even filed a statement of candidacy with the FEC. This time around, though, Marine vet Jonathan McConnell says he's raised $750,000 and floated himself a $250,000 loan on top of that. That's minuscule compared to the incumbent's $19 million war chest, but it's still a lot more firepower than Shelby's accustomed to facing.
And McConnell's already put $290,000 to work behind a new ad that hammers Shelby for his vote to confirm Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, saying he "rubber stamped" Obama's "failed policies" that "have made the world more dangerous." "Senator Shelby has failed us," says McConnell. "It's time to send in a Marine."
Shelby, by contrast, is sending in … Fred Davis, the notorious ad man behind the "Demon Sheep" debacle, and most recently responsible for an ad featuring an exploding toilet. While Davis hasn't yet foisted quite such a disaster on Shelby, his Cotton Bowl spot employed some grade-school fakery to make it appear as though the senator is just a regular guy who drives himself around the state: It flipped a shot of Shelby getting out of a car to make it look like he was disembarking from the driver's side when in fact he was leaving the passenger side (sleuthed out by the part in Shelby's hair suddenly appearing on the wrong side of his face).
Shelby's troops also include pollster Jim McLaughlin, who with his brother John McLaughlin is the brains behind McLaughlin and Associates, one of the very worst polling outfits in the nation. These guys couldn't hit Canada with a cruise missile: Their remarkable poll for former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor missed the mark by 45 points. It remains the biggest blown call in a congressional race we've ever encountered.
It's easy to get rusty, easy to rely on the wrong folks, easy to conclude that money will save you. Plenty of long-time politicians have made these mistakes, and it's possible the 81-year-old Shelby, who is seeking a sixth term, is making them. At the same time, even in this turbulent age, most incumbents still prevail, and it would be unwise to view McConnell's odds as anything but long. But this race has at least some of the right ingredients for an upset, and we'll see if the full recipe comes together when the primary rolls around on March 1.