Desperate Heidi Heitkamp Goes Negative Early
Last week Heidi Heitkamp got some ugly independent polling numbers showing Rep. Rick Berg with a 7 point lead in North Dakota’s Senate race. The state’s media has described the poll as being “close” between Berg and Heitkamp, but one would have to assign every undecided respondent in the poll to Heitkamp in order to get her polling within the margin of error.
Of course, there’s a lot of criticism of that polling conducted by Forum Communications, but setting it aside for a moment we may have a better illustration of how the race is going for Heitkamp. Get a load of these ads currently running on the internet accusing Rick Berg of attacking women:
The ad links to this fundraising page on Heitkamp’s campaign website.
We’re not even into the summer campaign season yet, and already Heitkamp has gone negative. And not just a little negative, but a really nasty sort of negative. Seriously, attacking women? How does it get any nastier than that?
This is a strange development for a candidate who once promised to “put petty politics aside.”
It may be the surest sign yet that Heitkamp’s campaign is feeling a little desperate these days. Campaigns that are on a sure footing needn’t resort to such extreme measures, though I’m not sure how much traction these sort of tactics will get.