Alexander raises $900K in Q2, spars with Obama in new ad

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) announced raising more than $900,000 in the second fundraising quarter of the year on Wednesday, and launched a new ad that features a testy exchange he had with President Obama over the healthcare law.

{mosads}Alexander now has $3.4 million cash on hand, according to his campaign. His most prominent primary challenger, state Rep. Joe Carr, has not yet released his second-quarter numbers but had $460,000 on hand at the end of March. 

In the new ad, which begins airing statewide on Sunday, a narrator declares: “Republicans chose Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander to lead.”

The ad then runs a clip of Alexander sparring with Obama at the White House Healthcare Summit in February of 2010 over the potential that ObamaCare would cause healthcare premiums to rise.

“When you said, ‘premiums go up,’ that’s just not the case,” Obama says in the clip to Alexander.

“The Congressional Budget Office report says that premiums will rise,” Alexander replies.

Obama pushes back: “No, no, no, no, and this is an example of where we’ve got to get our facts straight.”

“That’s my point,” says Alexander.

“Lamar was proven right,” a narrator closes the ad, as a quote from Fox News declaring the same flashes on the screen.

While Alexander has long been a target of the right, he looks well-poised for reelection about a month out from the primary.

Carr launched his first television ad last week, attacking Alexander on immigration reform, but Alexander has drawn conservative support — most recently from former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee — and aligned himself with conservatives in the Senate, like Kentucky Republican Rand Paul, with whom he appeared in Nashville this week to talk about healthcare reform.