NFIB spends $1M in ads vs. Allen, Franken

The political action committee of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) launched nearly $1 million in TV ads against Democratic Senate candidates Al Franken in Minnesota and Rep. Tom Allen in Maine this week.

The ads hit Franken and Allen for supporting the Employee Free Choice Act, which would do away with the secret ballot for union organizing under certain circumstances.

{mosads}The ads are slickly produced and feature an employee working his way through a building as he is surveilled in various ways by higher-ups.

The TV ads are the first of the cycle for the PAC, also known as NFIB Safe Trust. The PAC spent $570,000 on the ad against Franken and $390,000 on the ad against Allen.

In September, it ran $80,000 in newspaper ads against Franken and $40,000 in newspaper ads against Allen, bringing its total independent expenditures for those races to more than $1 million.

Lisa Goeas, NFIB’s vice president of political affairs, said the PAC has made a decision to make bigger impacts in fewer races, as opposed to spreading the money evenly over 25 to 30 races.

Allen spokeswoman Carol Andrews called the ads “more of the same, tired lies offered by earlier campaigns and sponsored by [Sen.] Susan Collins’s [R-Maine] partisan, special-interest allies.”

Franken and Minnesota Democrats have accused Coleman and NFIB of illegally coordinating, because NFIB is a client of Coleman’s Washington landlord, Jeff Larson. It is illegal to coordinate independent expenditures, but Democrats have admitted their evidence is circumstantial.

Coleman spokesman Luke Friedrich responded: “Angry Al is barking up the wrong tree. Al Franken is the only lawbreaker in this race. He broke tax laws in 18 states and workers’ compensation laws in New York.”

Goeas said that NFIB would also be running media campaigns in four key House districts — retiring Rep. Deborah Pryce’s (R-Ohio), Rep. Dave Reichert’s (R-Wash.), Rep. Robin Hayes’s (R-N.C.) and Rep. Jon Porter’s (R-Nev.).

She said NFIB would likely spend about $150,000-$175,000 in each of the four districts, and that the ads would be issue advocacy, as opposed to independent expenditures.