Democrats Begin National Security Messaging

Demo­crats are about to go on of­fense on na­tion­al se­cur­ity is­sues, as a pro­gress­ive vet­er­ans group that spent about $7 mil­lion on con­gres­sion­al races in the midterms kicks off its 2016 pro­gram.

VoteVets.org launched its first paid ad­vert­ising of the cycle Thursday, hit­ting Sen. Ron John­son of Wis­con­sin for fail­ing to act on prob­lems at the Vet­er­ans Med­ic­al Cen­ter in Tomah.

The 60-second ra­dio ad is the first in a num­ber of spots the group is work­ing on—both ra­dio and TV—in states such as New Hamp­shire, Illinois, and Col­or­ado, where Demo­crats have been at­tacked for sup­port­ing the pres­id­ent’s nuc­le­ar deal with Ir­an.

The group’s chair­man and cofounder, Jon Soltz, said he plans to play ag­gress­ively on an is­sue Re­pub­lic­ans have so far dom­in­ated this cycle, seek­ing to re­fo­cus the nar­rat­ive around GOP in­cum­bents’ own re­cord on se­cur­ity and vet­er­ans’ is­sues.

“There’s a gap for Demo­crats on se­cur­ity across the board,” Soltz told Na­tion­al Journ­al in an in­ter­view. “We’re go­ing to have to play on se­cur­ity, and we’re pre­pared to.”

GOP lead­ers, in­clud­ing Na­tion­al Re­pub­lic­an Sen­at­ori­al Com­mit­tee Chair­man Ro­ger Wick­er, have talked up the ad­vant­age Re­pub­lic­ans have on the “um­brella of se­cur­ity” this cycle, and at­tacked Demo­crats re­lent­lessly on Syr­i­an refugees, bor­der se­cur­ity, and the pres­id­ent’s IS­IS strategy.

The NR­SC has run TV ads in Nevada at­tack­ing the Demo­crat­ic Sen­ate nom­in­ee for sup­port­ing the Ir­an deal, and in Col­or­ado, a hand­ful of Sen. Mi­chael Ben­net’s Re­pub­lic­an chal­lengers have zer­oed in on the same mes­sage. In Wis­con­sin, a con­ser­vat­ive out­side group has already launched ads at­tack­ing John­son’s Demo­crat­ic op­pon­ent, former Sen. Russ Fein­gold, over the Tomah VA as well, con­tend­ing that the prob­lems pre­ceded John­son’s time in the Sen­ate. (That ac­cus­a­tion has been dis­puted by Fein­gold, who says he nev­er re­ceived no­ti­fic­a­tion of the hos­pit­al’s prob­lems.)

Soltz says Demo­crats across the board need to flip that script quickly, by high­light­ing ways in which GOP in­cum­bents have been “neg­li­gent with their time in the Sen­ate.

“We’re run­ning this ad be­cause they took a cheap shot say­ing [Fein­gold] knew about it. That’s not the case,” said Soltz.

“We know John­son knew about the prob­lems at the VA for six years, so he’s go­ing to have to de­fend that re­cord,” he ad­ded.

John­son’s cam­paign says Soltz’s timeline is in­ac­cur­ate, and that the sen­at­or “ac­ted as soon as he per­son­ally learned about the prob­lems at the Tomah VA,” in Janu­ary of 2015.

In par­tic­u­lar, Soltz plans to go after in­cum­bents’ at­tend­ance re­cords in se­cur­ity-re­lated com­mit­tees, for sup­port­ing policies to privat­ize Vet­er­ans Af­fairs, and for a re­cent vote to al­low people on the ter­ror­ist watch list to con­tin­ue to pur­chase fire­arms.

“I use the VA,” Army vet­er­an Shane Sander­son says in the ra­dio ad. “When vets raised alarms about the prob­lems at the Tomah VA, the [Mil­wau­kee] Journ­al Sen­tinel said John­son al­lowed their pleas for help to die in ‘the equi­val­ent of a con­gres­sion­al black hole.’”  

It’s a strategy Re­pub­lic­ans used suc­cess­fully against former Sen. Kay Hagan in North Car­o­lina in 2014, high­light­ing her ab­sence from a host of Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee hear­ings, and it’s one Demo­crats are eager to try them­selves this cycle. 

The Demo­crat­ic Sen­at­ori­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee echoed the strategy in a press re­lease Tues­day, call­ing Sen. Rand Paul of Ken­tucky a “no-show” at the Home­land Se­cur­ity Com­mit­tee the day after the Iowa caucuses.

This post was up­dated at 2:45 p.m.