The coronavirus pandemic is the subject of a new television advertisement that attacks Montana Sen. Steve Daines for his position on healthcare.
The 30-second spot from the liberal group, Protect Our Care, uses the Republican’s opposition to Obamacare to accuse him of dismissing voters’ concerns about COVID-19 and other healthcare-related issues. In a press release Thursday, Protect Our Care announced it was spending $250,000 on the ad-buy, a significant investment in Montana’s small media markets.
“Too many Montana families go to sleep at night worried about healthcare; coverage, costs, now fear of coronavirus,” a voice-over says, as the advertisement opens. “That doesn’t worry Steve Daines.”
Daines is up for reelection this year and is favored to win — Montana is a red state that supports President Trump. However, Democratic Sen. Jon Tester won reelection there in 2018, and Democrats are confident that Gov. Steve Bullock, Daines’s opponent, is the sort of Democrat who could win in Montana. Bullock, who briefly ran for president, announced his Senate campaign on Monday.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee swiftly came to Daines’s defense, while accusing Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, and the Democratic Party broadly, of playing petty politics with a serious health threat. On Wednesday, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. The virus has forced the cancellations of dozens of public events across the United States and is threatening to push the American economy into recession.
“Less than 24 hours after the WHO declared the Coronavirus a pandemic, Chuck Schumer’s dark money allies launched disgusting attack ads that politicize a disease that knows no party,” NRSC spokesman Jesse Hunt said in a statement. “If Democrats want to be seen as working toward a bipartisan solution on this incredibly serious issue then they should cease using it to try to score cheap political points.”
