Just days ahead of a runoff election, the conservative Super PAC Ending Spending Action Fund is running a devastating new web ad that cites incumbent Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) parroting President Obama’s famous claim that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”
Landrieu cast one of the last critical votes needed to move Obamacare through the Senate in December of 2009. Using a controversial reconciliation method, the Senate and House skirted decades of Congressional tradition and passed Obamacare in March 2010. President Obama signed the bill into law just a few days later.
The ad is just part of the $1.7 million the Super PAC and its related 501(c)(4) groups — whose communications are specifically issue-oriented rather than in favor of one candidate over another — are spending prior to this Saturday’s runoff election between Landrieu and Republican challenger Representative Bill Cassidy.
Titled “A Party To a Lie,” the web ad begins with a clip of President Obama speaking at a rally before Obamacare became law in 2010.
“If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan,” Obama says. Politifact labeled that “the lie of the year” in December 2013. The ad then shifts to a video of Landrieu, speaking on the floor of the Senate.
Landrieu boldly repeats President Obama’s lie.
“[T]hose individuals who like the coverage they already have will be able to keep their current plan,” she says confidently of the Obamacare bill she would soon vote for and push past the legislative finish line.
The screen then shifts to a graphic, which notes that “92,793 people in Louisiana face loss of health care policies,” citing a January 6, 2014 article from Louisiana’s The Advocate newspaper.
You can see the full ad here:
“We think it’s important that we turn out the conservative vote on Saturday,” Ending Spending Action Fund President Brian Baker told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview.
“We didn’t support a candidate in the primary,” Baker added. “Our whole effort is aimed at unifying the effort after the primary and making sure that the base turns out.”
“As for the web video we’re trying to give a complete representation of why voters in Louisiana shouldn’t vote for her.”
Both the Republican National Committee and other conservative groups, including the Susan B. Anthony List, have mounted an aggressive ground game in Louisiana since the November election that prompted this Saturday’s runoff between Landrieu and Cassidy.
“What’s unique about our operation,” Baker told Breitbart News, “is we do the surround-sound approach. We’re doing a lot of direct voter contact. We’re not just a television advertising Super PAC. We talk to voters on radio and online and through direct voter contact via direct mail and email. We do phones and door knocking.”
Although Baker did add that the Ending Spending Action Fund isn’t doing door knocking in Louisiana in advance of Saturday’s election because other groups have already covered that. “Throughout October,” Baker said, “we did extensive micro-targeting, all aimed at most conservative voters.”
Though recent polls show Cassidy in the lead, Baker cautioned that conservatives should take nothing for granted. “Saturday voting is unusual. There’s the SEC championship. It’s the start of hunting season. And Senator Landrieu has shown that she’s a survivor. She’s won runoffs in the past.”
The bottom line, Baker concluded, is that conservatives in Louisiana need to turn out and vote this Saturday.