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Divided We Stand

Divided We Stand
New book about the 2020 election.

Friday, August 26, 2011

American Crossroads in Nevada Special Election

In The Daily Caller, Alexis Levinson reports:

Two days before early voting begins in the special election in Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District, American Crossroads is out with a new web video, as part of a $250,000 independent expenditure attacking the Democratic candidate Kate Marshall.

The web video uses a particularly unflattering clip of Marshall, the state treasurer, (which was used in an earlier ad put out by the National Republican Congressional Committee), in which Marshall says: “I’m in charge of your money. You have less money today than you had yesterday.”

“With Nevada families hurting, what does state treasurer Kate Marshall have to say?” says the announcer in the ad, which then cuts to the clip of Marshall making that statement. “Under Kate Marshall, Nevada taxpayers have lost $25 million investing with a failed Wall Street bank. And Kate Marshall has increased spending in her Nevada treasurer’s office more than a million dollars. Kate Marshall’s big spending and wasted tax dollars: Not what we need more of in Washington.”

After each sentence, the clip of Marshall saying “You have less money,” repeats.

The statement was made when Marshall was addressing a Douglas County Democrats Keep Nevada Blue dinner. Marshall’s communications director James Hallinan explained that Marshall was “empathizing with what everyone in the room was experiencing: The economy had tanked causing people to have less money at home. The same thing was happening for the state’s budget with the economy crashing and less revenue coming in as a result.”

...

A big part of the American Crossroads expenditure is devoted to get-out-the-vote efforts, reaching out to voters “by mail, phone and internet advertising to promote the website www.MeetKateMarshall.com, with a special focus on making likely voters aware of early voting locations,” according to the Crossroads press release.

Such efforts are important, because, as University of Nevada, Reno, political science Professor Eric Herzik explained, “Turnout is THE factor in the race.” Lacking, “overwhelming interest,” in the race, getting people to the polls is a big concern, as turnout is expected to be low.

Republicans have a large voter registration in the district, which has had a Republican representative since its inception. As Jonathan Collegio, communications director for American Crossroads, explained, there are certainly enough Republicans and enough dislike of Obama in the district to propel Mark Amodei, the Republican candidate, to victory. But because of the turnout issue, “it’s mostly a matter of getting them to the polls.





The NRCC version (8/9):



The Nevada State GOP version (11/7):