Dem super PAC hitting nine House Republicans on shutdown
October 3, 2013
House Majority PAC, the super-PAC focused on electing Democrats to the House, is launching a wide-ranging multimedia ad campaign hitting all of its top nine Republican targets on the government shutdown.
The PAC is targeting GOP Reps. Gary Miller (Calif.), Mike Coffman (Colo.), Rodney Davis (Ill.), Mike Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Michael Grimm (N.Y.), Joe Heck (Nev.), David Joyce (Ohio), John Kline (Minn.) and Steve Southerland (Fla.) with search ads on Google and Bing.
The ads send users searching for information on their congressman and the shutdown to stand-alone sites that house petitions to tell the lawmaker in question to “stop playing games with our economy.”
The super-PAC is targeting Reps. Coffman, Heck, Joyce and Southerland with individually tailored television and Web ads accusing them each of playing “games” with Americans for their role in the shutdown.
“It’s just a political game to Steve Southerland, shutting down the federal government,” a narrator says in the ad hitting Southerland.
“It’s easy for Steve Southerland to play games when he said his $174,00 salary is not so much. He’s still getting paid,” the narrator ads, a reference to a controversial comment he made about his congressional salary in 2011.
The ad charges that Southerland “puts jobs and retirement at risk” with the shutdown.
The government shut down Tuesday as the previous funding measure ran out after the Republican-controlled House and the Democratic-controlled Senate were unable to come to a consensus on a bill to continue funding the government.
Republicans believe their efforts to defund or delay ObamaCare, which made the funding bills they passed in the lower chamber dead on arrival in the upper chamber, will resonate with Americans, who polling shows are unhappy with the law.
But Democrats believe the shutdown will ultimately be a political winner for them, bolstered by polls that show Americans largely blame Republicans. House Majority PAC joins the two central party committees in attacking Republicans for it and labeling it as the “GOP shutdown.”
This harmful and unnecessary government shutdown is a result of House Republicans’ complete embrace of the extremist, Tea Party mentality and their abject failure to pursue a reasonable course that would have prevented a shutdown and the economic damage it’s wreaking all across the country,” said Andy Stone, communications director for House Majority PAC.