Shooting things is back in vogue this campaign season, with Alaska's GOP Senate candidate taking aim at a television set in a new ad.
"Millions of dollars are flooding into Alaska, paid for by Washington special interests," says Dan Sullivan, Alaska's former attorney general, in a new ad. "Pretty soon, you're going to want to do this to your TV." Sullivan then turns around, points a gun at a TV and shoots it twice.
Watch the ad above.
Sullivan isn't the first candidate to shoot something to make a point. In 2010, Democrat Joe Manchin, who was then running for a Senate seat in West Virginia, used a rifle to shoot a hole through cap-and-trade legislation, saying it was "bad for West Virginia."
There has been plenty of outside money flowing into Alaska for the Senate race, and it's coming from both sides of the aisle. The conservative group Crossroads GPS just launched a $1.25 million ad buy against Sen. Mark Begich (D), while a pro-Begich super PAC also recently spent almost $500,000.
The Center for Public Integrity found that even before Sullivan won the GOP nomination last week, "[m]ore than 90 percent of the 16,000-plus ads aired so far this cycle by political action committees, super PACs and nonprofits have come from groups based outside Alaska or that receive the bulk of their funding from non-Alaskans."
Sullivan has called on Begich to sign an agreement banning outside spending in Alaska, but he nevertheless says he supports the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which opened the doors to significant outside spending.
According to HuffPost Pollster, which averages the publicly available polling in the race, Begich currently has a slight lead over Sullivan.
Want more updates from Amanda? Sign up for her newsletter, Piping Hot Truth.
Before You Go
