Voters being inundated with television and digital ads in the upcoming Ohio special election would be excused for not having a particularly favorable view of President Trump’s signature legislative achievement.
That’s because, of late, the sweeping tax reform package passed at the end of 2017 has gone largely unmentioned by Republican outside groups funneling money into the race to retain the seat vacated by Rep. Pat Tiberi (R-OH).
Two weeks out from an unexpectedly tight contest in Ohio’s 12th Congressional District—which President Trump won by 11 points—Republican outside groups have, instead, turned to topics like “open borders,” “amnesty for illegals,” and the composition of Democratic leadership.
One ad from the Congressional Leadership Fund PAC, which is closely allied with retiring House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), seeks to tie Democratic candidate Danny O’Connor to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), saying that they want to open “America’s doors to more crime and drugs.” CLF has been the biggest outside spender in the race, with at least $1.9 million invested and previously ran an ad with a favorable testimony about the tax law that has since been phased out.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and O’Connor himself have done the opposite, zeroing in on the tax overhaul and deeming it a “corporate tax giveaway.” O’Connor began running an ad entitled “Deserve” on July 17. In it, he notes that to pay for the tax cut, Republican candidate Troy Balderson has said he would consider proposing hikes in the Social Security eligibility age. Just two days after that, the DCCC began running a similar ad saying Balderson supports a “massive corporate tax break.”
According to a Democratic strategist familiar with the ad buys, by July 30, the O’Connor campaign and the DCCC will have spent more going after Balderson on the tax bill than Republican groups have spent promoting it.
The ad spending patterns are the latest evidence that the tax bill has not been the electoral panacea that some Republicans predicted it would be—similar to how Democrats discovered no political salvation in Obamacare in the election cycles immediately after it was passed.