DCCC Expands Map, Launches Eight New IE Ads
By Scott Bland // September 6, 2012 | 12:42 p.m.
Updated at 1:07 p.m.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released eight new independent expenditure TV ads Thursday, expanding the map of races the national committee is playing in as the party's convention in Charlotte winds down.
The bulk of the congressional districts targeted by the DCCC's new spots are Republican-held. Six of the eight are trained on Republican seats, while one hits a Republican in a merged district featuring a member-versus-member race, and one defends an open Democratic seat. The ads hit Reps. Jeff Denham (Calif.-10), Brian Bilbray (Calif.-52), Bobby Schilling (Ill.-17), Ann Marie Buerkle (N.Y.-24), and Quico Canseco (Texas-23), as well as Jonathan Paton, the Republican running to replace GOP Rep. Paul Gosar in Arizona's 1st District. (Gosar is running in a neighboring seat.)
Additionally, there are ads against Republican nominee Jason Plummer in Illinois's 12th District, where Democratic Rep. Jerry Costello is retiring, and a final ad against Rep. Jim Renacci in Ohio's 16th District. After Ohio lost two seats in redistricting, Renacci was paired with Democratic Rep. Betty Sutton in a district in the Cleveland suburbs this year.
The ads run a somewhat wider gamut than what we've seen from the DCCC so far this cycle. A handful of them, especially in Democratic-heavy seats like Buerkle's and Schilling's, stick to the Ryan budget-bashing script that formed the basis of the committee's earliest ads, while others diverge. In fact, depending on the district, there's a direct relationship between how well President Obama performed in 2008 and how intensely the ad focuses on Medicare. It is the backbone of ads running in the strongest Democratic districts; it is mentioned casually in some of the more closely divided districts; and it isn't referenced in the ads running in the districts where Obama performed the worst.
Many of the ads focus on accusations of personal and business malfeasance. The DCCC's Paton ad attacks his lobbying career, while the anti-Canseco spot summarizes fines and lawsuits filed against the freshman during his business career. The Renacci ad hits him on a more specific health-care related topic instead of the Medicare attack: funding for cancer screenings. Denham is tagged as a career politician, while a narrator says in another ad that Plummer doesn't have enough experience.
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