Clinton launches new round of ads

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) has launched two new television advertisements in Kentucky and a new ad in Oregon despite having $20 million in campaign debt.

Her ads in Kentucky, one of which calls for higher taxes for private equity and hedge fund managers, reinforce her campaign message that she is a fighter for the working class.

{mosads}The ad in Oregon punches back at pundits, such as Tim Russert of NBC News and George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, who have declared that the race for the Democratic nomination is essentially over and that Obama is the winner. 

The Kentucky spot, titled “Right Track,” shows Clinton on stage before a cheering audience railing against the different tax burdens faced by investors and wage earners.

“It is wrong that a Wall Street money manager making $50 million a year pays a lower percentage of his income in taxes than a nurse or a teacher or a truck driver or an auto worker making $50,000,” Clinton states in the clip.

The second Kentucky ad, “Partner,” shows a montage of working-class Americans discussing their economic hardships.

“It’s hard to decide between a gallon of milk and a gallon of gas,” says one man.

The Oregon ad departs from the working-class theme that Clinton hits on heavily in her Kentucky campaign.

It begins with brief clips of Russert and Stephanopoulos while a narrator says: “In Washington, they talk about who’s up and who’s down. In Oregon we care about what’s right and what’s wrong.”

Unlike the Kentucky ads and a spot aired in West Virginia, the Oregon ad does not feature sound bites from Clinton herself, relying instead on an unseen announcer.

As she was in West Virginia, Clinton is strongly favored to win Kentucky, which has a high concentration of blue-collar white voters. She is an underdog in Oregon.

Despite the campaign’s high debt load, Clinton advisers vow that she will have enough resources to compete through the last Democratic primaries on June 3.

Campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe told reporters earlier this week that Clinton raised a “seven-figure” amount in the first day after winning West Virginia by 41 points.