Credit where credit is due: Stu Rothenberg has a pretty sober assessment of the GOP’s downballot chances this year in his latest column. Here’s one nugget, though, that is worth teasing out:
The NRCC has scaled back advertising in Nevada’s 3rd district and New Mexico’s 1st district, and the campaign committee is going to have to make key decisions over the next few weeks about which candidates it will try to save and which it will allow to drown slowly.
The Martin Heinrich campaign has more details on the NRCC’s retreat in NM-01:
Back in August, the NRCC reserved $731,690 in advertising on behalf of Darren White from October 14 to November 4th [NRCC to spend $731k on TV ads in 1st District Race, 8/27/08]. The NRCC has now slashed two weeks out of the three-week buy, cutting an estimated $500,000 in financial support from the White campaign.
You’ll recall that White, the sheriff of Bernalillo County, was one of the NRCC’s most-prized recruits earlier this cycle after Heather Wilson decided to run for Senate. It seems that the NRCC is feeling less and less confident about his abilities to retain this seat, and it also appears that Jon Porter may have to fend for himself. In a normal year with an adequately-funded NRCC, neither of these guys would have been abandoned, and both of them could have held on — but this isn’t a normal year by any means.
So far, the NRCC has been picking a limited set of targets: AL-02, MI-07, NJ-03, OH-01, OH-15, PA-03, and WI-08. They will undoubtedly add a few more districts to the heap and circle the wagon, but which ones will they be? The Missouri races? ID-01? WY-AL?
I read somewhere just the other day that the NRCC was pulling resources out of OH-15 as well.
I would expect them to drop money for the Diaz-Balarts, Heller, Sali, Graves… More that I can’t think of.
I don’t understand why they are spending money here but pulling out of NV-03 and not targeting AL-05. But as long as they keep doing stuff that doesn’t make sense to me I won’t complain
digging into some of their other ad buys.
Those are not the only ones that got scaled back.
Stay tuned.