Poor NRCC has to pick and choose

The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) will focus its limited resources on just a handful of GOP-held seats, if its first ad buys are any indication.

The committee used independent expenditures to launch a trio of ads Tuesday in districts it hopes to hold in November.

{mosads}It spent $2.5 million on ads to prop up vulnerable incumbents Tim Walberg in Michigan and Steve Chabot in Ohio and to save retiring Rep. Terry Everett’s Alabama seat.

The investment represents more than one-sixth of the total cash on hand the NRCC had at the end of August, according to Federal Election Commission reports and sources in the committee.

With Democrats claiming a playing field of several dozen districts, it indicates the NRCC’s independent expenditure operation will be picky with the races it feels it can affect, targeting large sums of money on them and leaving other candidates to fend for themselves.

The NRCC spent $1.3 million on an ad for Walberg, a freshman facing a well-funded challenge from Democratic state Sen. Mark Schauer, and perennial target Chabot will be bolstered by a $920,000 ad buy in his race against state Rep. Steve Driehaus (D).

Schauer outraised Walberg $1.3 million to $1.2 million through mid-July and has released a pair of polls recently showing him leading, including by 10 points in one released Tuesday.

A mid-September Walberg poll, conversely, showed the incumbent leading by 10 points.

The NRCC’s ad hits Schauer for getting kicked off a state Senate committee for missing meetings. Schauer’s campaign blames that on politics and said the committee chairman didn’t remove members of his own party who were also absent.

In the same vein, the Driehaus ad criticizes him for missing a state House vote that would have limited home foreclosures in order to attend a Washington fundraiser. Driehaus acknowledges the missed vote but said Chabot “has been absent on the issue for 14 years.”

{mospagebreak}The smallest of the three buys came in Everett’s district, where state Rep. Jay Love (R) is matched up against Montgomery Mayor Bobby Bright (D). The NRCC buy there is just shy of $300,000 in a cheap market, and the ad points out that Bright has accepted money from more liberal factions of the Democratic Party.

Bright suspended his campaign early Monday due to his sister’s death, and campaign spokeswoman Katie Lilley said “the timing of this latest attack is extremely insensitive.”

Republicans contend that the ad was already up when they learned of the situation.

{mosads}The committee also launched two small ad buys last week in Rep. Phil English’s (R-Pa.) and Rep. Steve Kagen’s (D-Wis.) districts, totaling just more than $200,000.

Kagen is so far the only incumbent Democrat the NRCC has spent independent money against, having also sent a mailer Monday tying Kagen to ethically embattled Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.).

The Kagen mailers went out the same day as NRCC mail pieces in the districts of Chabot, Walberg and retiring Rep. Jim Saxton (R-N.J.).

“We plan to point out the flaws in the Democrats’ many fatally flawed candidates,” said NRCC spokesman Ken Spain. “At a time when the economy is weighing on the minds of voters, Democrats are offering up candidates that have supported massive tax hikes and put their own political needs above the needs of the middle class.”

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) spokesman Doug Thornell said: “The NRCC realizes they can’t win on the issues, like the economy, so they have resorted to a campaign of mass distortion and distraction. It is just more of the same from a desperate party that has come to symbolize the status quo.”

In total, the NRCC yielded its Democratic counterpart a two-month head start on the independent expenditures, which are the main way the national party committees spend money on individual races.

The NRCC has been creative with its limited resources, also making smaller coordinated expenditures to help fund ads in several Democratic-held districts, including Rep. Paul Kanjorski’s (Pa.), Rep. Chris Carney’s (Pa.), Rep. Carol Shea-Porter’s (N.H.) and retiring Rep. Bud Cramer’s (Ala.).

Those coordinated funds, though, are limited to $84,000.

The DCCC has spent about $20 million so far and had four times as much cash as the NRCC at the end of August.

The NRCC figures to have gotten a fundraising boost in early September, though, thanks to the hoopla surrounding vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s Republican National Convention speech. But September’s financial filings aren’t due for another two weeks.