Club for Growth hits Amash challenger

The super-PAC affiliated with conservative group Club for Growth is out with a new ad campaign hammering the primary opponent of one of its strongest allies in Congress, Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.).

{mosads}Amash is facing a challenge from businessman Brian Ellis and has been targeted by business groups as ripe for defeat.

The ads, airing on both radio and television in the district, frame Ellis as a “big-taxing, big-spending, corporate-welfare-loving politician,” as the narrator describes him in the radio ad, and urges listeners to oppose him.

The ads outline what they characterize as the candidate’s penchant for wasteful spending as a East Grand Rapids Public School Board trustee and as a committee member of the Michigan Strategic Fund. 

“Now Brian Ellis is running for Congress. Sounds like he’d fit right in,” the narrator says in the TV ad.

Business groups expressed an increased interest in going on offense this cycle to defeat conservatives after a conservative-led strategy to defund ObamaCare caused a government shutdown and significant damage to the GOP brand last year.

They believe defeating Amash could send a signal to conservative groups and lawmakers that business groups will no longer stand for some of their tactics.

But with the new ads, the deep-pocketed Club is signaling it’s ready to put up a fight to defend the congressman against the challenge, and they’re not pulling any punches in working to paint him as a liberal. 

“Brian Ellis is a tax-hiking, corporate welfare-loving, big-spending politician. A record like that belongs in the Democratic primary, not the Republican one,” Club for Growth President Chris Chocola said in a statement.