The coronavirus is seeping into the 2020 campaign, this time in the critical battleground of Michigan, where Republican Senate candidate John James is running a new television ad accusing Democratic Sen. Gary Peters of using the global pandemic to distort his position on healthcare.
The James campaign is spending “six figures” to air the 30-second spot on broadcast and cable television across Michigan, a state that offers the GOP a legitimate opportunity to pick up a Senate seat in November. In the ad, James speaks directly to the camera as he calls Peters a liar and suggests that the Democrat is using the spread of COVID-19 to score political points. James is mounting his second campaign for Senate after coming up short against Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow in 2018.
“Sen. Gary Peters just launched his campaign with a lie. A lie about healthcare while America is facing its worst health crisis in decades. He’s exploiting our fears for his own political gain,” James says at the spot opens.
The James campaign’s advertisement is a response to an attack from Senate Majority PAC, the super PAC affiliated with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York. The Senate Majority PAC ad does not mention, or allude to, the coronavirus.
The group, prohibited by federal law from coordinating with the Peters campaign, recently went on the air with a spot that equates James’s opposition to Obamacare with support for increasing healthcare costs and eliminating insurance protections for preexisting medical conditions.
“Michiganders with preexisting conditions have to live with the fear of losing their health insurance every day, and we believe they have the right to know about his promise to repeal the law that protects them,” said Rachel Irwin, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority PAC. “They are his words, and if John James can’t defend them, he has no business running for U.S. Senate.”
The Republican Party’s 53-seat Senate majority is under threat this cycle in as many as five states: Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Iowa, and North Carolina. But the GOP is likely to pick up a seat in Alabama and is optimistic about James’s prospects in Michigan. The charismatic 38-year-old African American is a businessman and a military combat veteran.
With polls showing Democrats with the upper hand on healthcare, liberal groups have used GOP opposition to Obamacare to paint Republicans as in favor of undoing protections for those with preexisting conditions. Now, some Democratic groups are running ads that essentially blame Republicans for the coronavirus.
