Heidi Heitkamp Accuses Rick Berg Of Attacking Women, Democrat Super PAC Accuses Him Of “Using” His Mother
I don’t have cable, and I don’t really watch a lot of television, so while I understood intellectually that liberal Senate candidate Heidi Heitkamp the groups supporting her are carpet bombing the state’s airwaves with advertising right now, I had no idea how bad it was.
Today, while sitting in a waiting room for ten minutes, I saw no fewer than three television ads for Heitkamp. And it’s not just the number of ads that are annoying (when they would come on I could hear groans from others in the room) but how nasty they are.
A couple of weeks back Heitkamp ran an ad in which she tried to insert her past (and thankfully successful) battle with breast cancer into the race, insinuating that Republicans were somehow attacking her for it. But those attacks haven’t actually happened. Meanwhile, even as Heitkamp tries to play the victim, her ads are some of the nastiest I’ve ever seen run in North Dakota.
Like this one from Harry Reid’s Majority PAC accusing Rick Berg of, I’m not joking, using his mother.
And then there’s this web ad, which has been run by Heitkamp’s own campaign for some time now all over the internet including this site, which accuses Berg of attacking women:
The problem with negative campaign ads is that, if you overdo them, you stop hurting your opponent and you start hurting yourself by irritating voters. I don’t know if Heitkamp has crossed that line yet or not, but she has to be coming close, and the one of these ads are just atrocious.
Hard-nosed political rhetoric is one thing. Attacking somebody’s mother, and accusing them of attacking women, are something else entirely.
On a related note, it’s a bit odd that Heitkamp is running on a “change in Washington” platform even as she is supported by attack ads run by a Super PAC tied to current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Tags: harry reid, Heidi Heitkamp, North Dakota News, Rick Berg
