* A relative of mine saw this ad on TV and told me it looked like a family and a school bus were run over by a tank. Not quite, but it comes awfully close. Press release…
Gary Forby, John Bradley and Brandon Phelps claim to represent Southern Illinois, but they have backed Mike Madigan’s tax-and-spend agenda for more than a decade, supporting higher taxes, reckless spending and a bailout of Chicago Public Schools. Today, the House Republican Organization released a new ad to underscore their years of service to Mike Madigan. The broadcast TV ad will be backed by substantial resources.
Sen. Mark Kirk’s campaign released an ad attacking challenger Rep. Tammy Duckworth’s lawsuit settlement. The ad charges that Duckworth ‘humiliated and bullied’ employees and spent $26,000 of taxpayers’ money to fight the suit.
A preliminary review of federal television station records show what appears to be a limited buy for the ad, with only $35,000 being spent alone on Chicago stations ABC-7 and NBC-5.
Unless they up the buy, this is essentially a press release ad.
Those numbers are just through this Tuesday and the ad was just trafficked so it isn’t showing up on all the stations. It will have sufficient points behind it to drive the message.
Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, widely considered to be the most vulnerable Republican senator up for re-election this year, raised only $1 million in the second quarter of 2016, his campaign announced, a modest sum for a highly competitive race.
Rep. Tammy Duckworth, Mr. Kirk’s Democratic opponent, raised $2.7 million. She ended the second quarter with $5.5 million cash on hand, compared with Mr. Kirk’s $3.1 million.
Though the race is considered a toss-up by the Cook Political Report, Mr. Kirk has all but lost the financial backing of national Republicans, with groups like the National Republican Senatorial Committee and One Nation sitting the race out entirely.
*** UPDATE 2 *** Press release…
In response to Mark Kirk’s desperate new attack ad — which is in reality a $35,000 press release that won’t be widely seen by Illinois voters — Duckworth deputy campaign manager Matt McGrath issued the following statement:
“Tammy Duckworth served 23 years in the National Guard and nearly lost her life in service of her country, and she has made fighting for Veterans her life’s work, with tangible results. Mark Kirk, on the other hand, lies with such ease and frequency, both about his own military record and his political opponents, it’s hard to keep up. Here he is once again overhyping a civil case that a federal judge called a ‘garden variety workplace case’ before dismissing it, and which was eventually settled at ‘nuisance value,’ saving taxpayer dollars.
“This dishonest attack is also plainly an attempt to distract from his abysmal fundraising, which he released Friday night, and which indicates that even though Kirk always does the bidding of Wall Street and the corporate special interests that have funded his campaigns for 16 years, the gravy train is running dry.” — Matt McGrath, campaign spokesman
