House Majority PAC Launching Ads in Four Districts

By Scott Bland  //  September 25, 2012 | 6:00 a.m.

House Majority PAC is launching a quartet of new television ads Tuesday, expanding the Democratic super PAC's reach to two more districts in Arizona and returning to one each in Illinois and Virginia with follow-ups to previous ads.

Each spot is tailored to specifics of the districts. Three (Arizona's 1st District, Illinois's 17th District, and Virginia's 2nd District) are Republican-held, while the fourth (Arizona's 9th District) is a new seat created in redistricting. The ad for GOP Rep. Bobby Schilling's sprawling Illinois district is being broadcast in two media markets (Peoria and Rockford) by House Majority PAC while SEIU, the super PAC's frequent TV advertising partner, is paying for an identical ad in the Quad Cities market.

The anti-Schilling spot accuses the freshman of combining coziness with special interests and support for outsourcing tax breaks. The Virginia spot, hitting freshman Republican Scott Rigell, also combines a set of votes into an argument, painting Rigell as a protector of millionaire tax breaks and oil company subsidies at the expense of payroll tax relief.

Neither of the Republicans running in the targeted Arizona districts are incumbents, but they still had records for House Majority PAC to go after. In the 1st District, the super PAC mimics the Democratic Congressional Committee's line of attack against former Republican state legislator Jonathan Paton, dubbing him "Payday Paton" for his work as a lobbyist with the payday loans industry and connecting that with Social Security and Medicare privatization.

The 9th District ad goes after Republican nominee Vernon Parker on education, using video of him telling an audience that "we have to start by getting rid of the Department of Education." Education happens to be one of Democratic nominee Kyrsten Sinema's key issues, and the spot's use of video and Parker's own words calls to mind House Majority PAC's ads against Jesse Kelly in the Arizona 8th District special election to replace Gabrielle Giffords earlier this year. Then, the group's use of old video of Kelly's tea party-themed 2010 speeches prevented Kelly from completing a full overhaul of his image for the special election. The Arizona 1st District spot is running in the Phoenix media market for one week and $320,000, as is the 9th District commercial. The Illinois ad will run in Rockford for two weeks and Peoria for one, for $215,000 total, while SEIU runs the ad for two weeks in the Quad Cities. The Virginia ad will run for a week in Norfolk at $110,000.

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