The final deadline for Todd Akin to drop out of the Missouri Senate race came and went yesterday. With the Republican hopeful’s name finally set in stone on the state ballot, Sen. Claire McCaskill wasted little time unleashing her first direct attack on Akin and the “legitimate rape” comments that nearly forced him from the race.
Here’s her campaign’s new ad, which ends with the narrator asking, “What will [Akin] say next?”:
McCaskill and her Democratic allies saw a head-to-head match-up with Akin as the senator’s best chance to retain her seat—even before Akin’s controversial comments this summer upended what was shaping up to be a tight race. The senator and her reelection team avoided bashing Akin these past few weeks (even going as far as to occasionally defend his right to remain in the race), in what amounted to a not-so-secret ploy to help ensure that Republicans didn’t replace Akin with someone better equipped to defeat her in November.
