Senate Republicans' campaign arm is launching its first attack in Michigan’s Senate race, targeting Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin on pandemic relief spending, according to an ad shared first with NBC News.
Slotkin easily won her party’s primary Tuesday, setting up a race against GOP former Rep. Mike Rogers in November. And Republicans are wasting no time attacking Slotkin, who is in her third term, in a race that will be key to Senate control.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee’s independent expenditure ad, its first of the election cycle, kicks off a $10 million buy in the Michigan race.
The NRSC’s ad, which will run on TV, radio and digital platforms, targets Slotkin’s support for government spending during the coronavirus pandemic, criticizing her support for a measure that provided stimulus checks to millions of people, as well as prisoners.
The ad notes that stimulus check recipients included former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, who was convicted of committing sexual assaults against hundreds of girls and women on the national team and in Michigan, and convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
“Elissa Slotkin voted for wasteful spending that sent inflation through the roof and made life unaffordable for Michigan families,” NRSC spokeswoman Maggie Abboud said in a statement. “Larry Nassar and the Boston Marathon bomber benefitted from Slotkin’s policies — Michiganders got hosed.”
Federal judges did order Tsarnaev and Nassar to hand over their stimulus payments, as well as other funds in their accounts, to victims.
One Nation, the nonprofit arm of the GOP super PAC Senate Leadership Fund, also launched its first ad in the race as part of a $9.4 million buy that will run through Labor Day, and it targeted Slotkin on pandemic spending.
“Elissa Slotkin’s votes for reckless spending have cost Michigan families thousands,” a narrator says. “Tell Elissa Slotkin ‘no thank you’ to the wasteful spending and to start putting Michigan families first.”
The 30-second spot, which will run on television, radio and online platforms, will run in Michigan’s competitive 7th District, which Slotkin represents in the House.
One Nation President and CEO Steven Law said in a statement, “Elissa Slotkin’s constituents trusted her to be a good steward of their hard-earned money, but instead she’s costing them thousands of dollars.”
Slotkin said when she supported the pandemic relief measure in early 2021 that the pandemic was “the number one threat to Michiganders’ health and economic security right now.”
“That said, there are certainly aspects of this bill I don’t like,” Slotkin said in a statement at the time. “As with earlier COVID relief packages we have considered, it’s far from perfect. I would have preferred a more targeted distribution of stimulus checks, and that we had kept this package narrowly tailored to COVID relief.”
Slotkin faced attacks over her support for government spending in her 2022 re-election to the House, which was one of the most expensive races in the country. She defeated then-state Sen. Tom Barrett by 5 percentage points.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee also hit the airwaves in Michigan, with its independent expenditure arm launching new TV ads there and Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The DSCC's ad targets Rogers himself, highlighting his Florida home and his business dealings, alleging he is tied to special interests.
"Rogers made millions and now he wants to be senator so he can cash in again," a narrator says in the ad.
Rogers' campaign has previously said the former congressman has been transparent about his business dealings.
"It's absurd and weird that Slotkin is already lying to Michiganders, especially when she's praised Mike Rogers for years," campaign communications director Chris Gustafson said in a statement to NBC News in response to the DSCC's ad. "But Slotkin's dark money friends, funded by businesses with direct ties to Beijing, have no choice since they can't defend her record of raising grocery prices and allowing millions of illegal immigrants into our neighborhoods.
