New ad will hammer GOP on healthcare bill
With eye on midterm, Democrats take aim at House members who voted for plan.
Democrats on Monday will begin airing a drive-time ad on Southern California radio stations targeting five Republican members of Congress who voted last week for the GOP healthcare plan.
The ad buy, currently scheduled to run for one week on news, sports and Spanish-language stations, is rare this early in the election cycle.
Democrats believe that the Republican vote for the unpopular healthcare bill will assist the party in its otherwise uphill effort to gain control of the House in 2018.
The Southern California ad from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee does not mention the congressional members by name because voters in all of the districts will be within listening range.
The targets of the ad are five of the seven most vulnerable House Republicans in California — Darrell Issa of Vista, Dana Rohrabacher of Costa Mesa, Mimi Walters of Irvine, Steve Knight of Palmdale and Ed Royce of Fullerton.
All of them serve in districts won by Hillary Clinton in November’s presidential election, as do Jeff Denham of Turlock and David Valadao of Hanford.
The House healthcare bill is now under consideration in the Senate, which is expected to make changes that may send the measure back to the House for a compromise. The ad repeats arguments that Democrats made in their effort to defeat the American Health Care Act.
Republicans, it says, would strip healthcare coverage from millions of people and raise costs, particularly on voters who are older or who have preexisting conditions — elements confirmed in a Congressional Budget Office report on the measure’s impact. It then lists estimates of thousands of dollars in heightened costs, as defined by a study issued by a liberal-leaning advocacy group.
“That’s the sound of the congressional Republicans’ healthcare plan coming down the tracks,” the ad says. “Get out of the way.”
Eighteen months remain before the midterm election, and it’s not clear where voters will rank healthcare by November 2018. But Democrats believe that it will remain a powerful issue, particularly in districts that already were competitive.
There are 23 seats across the nation held by Republicans in districts won by Clinton. Immediately after the healthcare vote, Democrats began targeting many of those officeholders with digital ads.
Taking over the House would require Democrats to win all of those seats, or most of them with surprise pickups elsewhere.