Senate GOP campaign arm launches ads targeting Dems

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) is launching a new ad campaign to blast vulnerable Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.) as well as Rep. Jacky Rosen, the Nevada Democrat running against Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.).

Both of the digital ads are meant to frame the lawmakers as part of the Democratic establishment —Heitkamp as a member of the “swamp” that President Trump wants to rid from Washington and Rosen as a “puppet” of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). The ads will direct people to petitions calling for each lawmaker to buck “liberal special interests.” 

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Michael McAdams, an NRSC spokesman, blasted both lawmakers in a statement corresponding with the release of the ads. He warned that “North Dakotans will make Heidi Heitkamp pay for the price for failing to work with President Trump,” while he needled Rosen as a “rubber-stamp for Nancy Pelosi’s out-of-touch agenda.”

North Dakota represents one of the party’s top offensive opportunities — Trump won the state by 36 points in November and Heitkamp has tried to walk the thin line between her party affiliation and the reality that most of her constituents support Trump. Heitkamp has supported most of Trump’s nominees, including Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, but she’s bucked some of the president’s top priorities like voting against the ObamaCare repeal and the administration’s arms deal with Saudi Arabia. 

Heller is the most vulnerable Republican incumbent this year in a state Hillary Clinton won by a narrow margin last year. Heller has emerged worse for the wear from his public wavering over the GOP plan to repeal ObamaCare, and Republican groups have begun flocking to his defense to soften up Rosen, a freshman House member.