U.S. Senate candidate and Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes (D) goes skeet-shooting in her campaign's latest television ad in an attempt to make it clear that she's "not Barack Obama."
The ad, released Monday, has Grimes firing critiques toward her opponent, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), as she shoots clay pigeons. She refers to a mix-up in a McConnell web video that featured an image of the Duke University Blue Devils instead of the University of Kentucky Wildcats as well as a comment he made about whether it was his responsibility to stimulate local economic development.
“Mitch McConnell wants you to think I’m Barack Obama,” she says in the ad. “Mitch is the same guy who thought Duke Basketball players were UK! Or who’s attacking me on coal, after doing next to nothing while we’ve lost thousands of coal jobs. He even said it’s not his job to bring jobs to Kentucky.”
Given Obama's dismal approval ratings in Kentucky -- hovering around 30 percent -- the spot marks an effort to combat Republican attacks that she'd side with the president and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
“I disagree with [the president] on guns, coal and the EPA," Grimes explains.
After the ad flashes a photo of McConnell carrying a musket onstage at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Grimes quips "that’s not how you hold a gun."
Grimes has now joined a club of candidates who have featured guns in their campaign ads, including Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Rep. John Barrow (D-Ga.) as well as Republican Senate hopefuls such as former Alaska Attorney General Dan Sullivan (R) and Iowa state Sen. Joni Ernst (R).
McConnell leads Grimes by just over 4 percentage points, according to HuffPost Pollster, which combines all publicly available polling data.
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