With the DCCC dropping $111,000 on TV ads and literature in the special election race to replace GOP Rep. Richard Baker, the NRCC has followed suit with a $110K buy of its own against Democrat Don Cazayoux.
The NRCC’s ad (viewable here) hits Cazayoux on taxes and also mocks the spelling of his name. DavidNYC offers his take:
Making fun of his last name strikes me as remarkably tone deaf and buttresses the claims that the staff at the NRCC – long considered a very good shop – really has gotten a lot weaker. This reminds of when the Club for Growth ran ads against Olympia Snowe calling her a “Franco-Republican” (she likes to raise taxes – just like the French, get it?), despite Maine have a very large population of French descent.
As for the tax hike claims, the ad in tiny type has a running list of bills (which Cazayoux presumably voted for) that allegedly contained these tax hikes. If these claims are bullshit, Cazayoux should demand the ad be taken off the air. (Remember, the threshold is lower for non-candidate ads.)
Meanwhile, quietly concerned about the open seat race to fill the vacant seat of MS-01 (previously held by Roger Wicker, who was tapped by Haley Barbour to replace Trent Lott in the Senate), the NRCC also logged a $12K expenditure on a poll of the district. Depending on its results, we may see the GOP pour some more resources into this race to bolster GOP candidate Greg Davis against Democrat Travis Childers, who is running a hard-charging campaign for the R+10 seat.
Even without a pair of wins here, the fact that the NRCC is bleeding resources on a string of red seat special elections is priceless.
“Even without a pair of wins here, the fact that the NRCC is bleeding resources on a string of red seat special elections is priceless.”
It all comes down to money. I was expecting the GOP to have to spend a lot in LA-06, MS-01 is another matter.
Can’t wait to see the Democratic response.
The GOP is being put on the defensive.
It has to shell out money for CDs that should be safe, and while it is fighting like hell to hold them, the DEMS open up new battlefields. FACIT: The more this game gets played, the less time the GOP will have to open up battlefields agains the DEMS. Simple math.
And we need this kind of approach both up-and-down ticket.
God they’ll regret that when the Cajun vote comes out. It’s already been proven, hilariously enough, in polling, that in South Louisiana, when the election is between a non-cajun name and a cajun name, Cajuns strongly swing to the guy with the Cajun name, always. The very fact they’re making fun of that makes them look like some big, outa town organization, and people hate that in rural south louisiana. Plus Jenkins is protestant, and Cazayoux is Catholic, and that should help him with the Catholic vote in this overwhelmingly Catholic district.
Is that they go so far into debt defending seats. And then the debt is so far into the red that it takes them into 2010 to even break $0.
It could happen. Who in their right mind whats to donate to the minority to retire their debt?
My jaw dropped when I heard that NRCC ad, and it takes a lot in a campaign ad to make me surprised. To actually say, with regard to Cazayoux’s last name, “tough to spell”? Seriously? To make the “Cazayoux-Tax You” comparison is insulting enough, but to make a rip on how to spell a Cajun name? Wow.