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Democrats have started injecting big bucks into TV ads to nudge the dead-lead race Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes is waging against Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell over the edge. So now McConnell has found a donor to help him match the big bucks:
Mitch McConnell:
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is giving his reelection campaign a $1.8 million personal loan to stave off a new round of attack ads from Democrats.
A week ago it appeared the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee was giving up on the race when it pulled the plug on television advertising after a $1.4 million buy.
But the Democratic Party committee plunged back into this fight this week by announcing it would spend another $650,000 on television ads to help Alison Lundergan Grimes against McConnell. The Senate Majority PAC, a Democratic super-PAC, followed up with a pledge to spend $850,000 in the state.
McConnell has a stable lead in polls, but doesn’t want to let the new Democratic ads go unmatched. He has long pledged to his Republican colleagues that he would not take any party funds to help win reelection.
“Sen. McConnell has maintained a longstanding personal commitment to his members that he won’t draw any resources from the team. So he’s going to match Obama’s money men out of his own pocket,” said John Ashbrook, McConnell’s spokesman.
Hey, it’s a better gift to himself than a new hair-do.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.