Ashley Parker does a very nice job previewing nine months of campaign ad dialogue. “Among more than 1,000 health care-focused commercials airing for House races,” writes Parker, citing ad trackers, “only seven did not contain negative messages about the law.”
Here are a couple of examples of what gets defined as negative. In Florida, the House Majority PAC is trying to smother opposition to Rep. Joe Garcia (who beat a deeply flawed opponent in 2012, aided by Obama coattails) by telling voters how much he hated the ACA rollout.
Same deal in Iowa: Here’s the Senate Majority PAC defending Rep. Bruce Braley, the Democrats’ frontrunning Senate candidate, because he, too, hated the rollout.
That ran for two weeks at the cost of a quarter-million dollars. Those ads are instructive: The primaries and elections in both states are half a year away, and Braley’s drawn unexpectedly weak opposition.
