A super PAC aligned with House Democratic leaders is out with a big new ad buy that hits Republican 6th District candidate Karen Handel on familiar issues: her past runs for office and "fancy" spending habits.
The House Majority PAC, which aims to wrest control of the House from the GOP, said Tuesday that it's putting $500,000 behind a new spot that repeats many of the same attacks that Handel's fellow Republicans deployed during the first round of the race.
“Signs” features a host of political yard signs advertising Handel’s past runs for governor and U.S. senator, as well as a Lexus SUV and private jet. It slams Handel for “always taking taxpayers for a ride.”
“A Lexus SUV. Taxpayer-funded air travel. $15,000 on fancy office chairs while Georgia faced a huge budget deficit. With Handel’s big spending on cruise control, taxpayers foot the bill,” the ad’s narrator states.
Watch the ad here:
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Club for Growth have also deployed similar attacks against Handel in recent months.
The Lexus is a reference to the car Handel had while secretary of state, and it’s a criticism that came up in her Senate race against David Perdue in 2014. Handel’s campaign previously said she had owned the wheels before she won statewide office.
As to her spending when she was secretary of state, the Handel campaign pointed to a recent PolitiFact article that considered a previous Democratic attack on her official budget to be"mostly false."
"Nancy Pelosi is running an ad she knows is false, for a candidate who is not being truthful with 6th District voters about his own positions or experience," said campaign spokesman Charlie Harper. "Every claim has been covered at KarenHandelFacts.com. Politifact broke down the claim of bigger budgets and found that this claim falls "wide of the mark."
The House Majority PAC is one of several Democratic groups to beef up their presence in the 6th District with three weeks until the June 20 runoff. It's also spent $200,000 on a get-out-the-vote field effort.
As we wrote earlier this morning, the left has so far outspent the right in this nationally-watched contest that is now considered the most expensive in the history of the U.S. House.
Meanwhile, the Handel campaign has recently focused on Democrat Jon Ossoff's past proposal for the Pentagon to consolidate its military bases in order to save money. The Handel camp said Ossoff "flip-flopped" by changing his campaign website after critics pointed out the plan would cost the state jobs. Ossoff's folks attributed the original language to a "copy error."
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