Fighting to get above single digits in polling on the crowded U.S. Senate race, Joshua Rales and Dennis Rasmussen have become the first Democratic candidates to run extensive TV commercials to boost their campaigns.
Rales, a Montgomery County businessman, said he will be the first to run ads in Maryland?s three main media markets: Baltimore, Washington and Salisbury.
Rasmussen, a lobbyist who once served as Baltimore County executive, has run 100 spots on cable news in recent weeks, and is buying hundreds more, his campaign manager said.
Rales? ads began running Wednesday.
“For the last three years, we?ve been fighting a war over foreign oil,” says Rales in the ad, speaking directly to the viewer. “The cost in human life and suffering has been tragic. We?ve spent $300 billion in Iraq ? enough to fix our schools and healthcare system here at home. Meanwhile, our borders and ports are still unprotected.
“In the Senate, I?ll vote to bring our troops home within a year, and I?ll work for an alternative energy policy so we never have to fight this kind of war again,” Rales said.
Rasmussen?s ad begins with images of stranded victims of Hurricane Katrina, illegal immigrants jumping a fence, the war in Iraq, gasoline pricesand electric meters.
“I no longer trust our government to take care of the people?s business,” says Rasmussen.
Pointing at the camera, he says, “Have you had enough of the failure of political extremes? It?s time to govern in a new way, not the extremes, but from the middle” and then called himself a “common-sense moderate.”
