Wis. Senate candidates ramp up TV ad buys

MADISON, Wis. (AP) ? Wisconsin's U.S. Senate race is in full swing, with all but one of the candidates now advertising on television and the Republican fight for the nomination becoming more pointed less than five weeks before the primary.

Polls show the lead held by former Gov. Tommy Thompson is starting to slip to political newcomer and hedge fund manager Eric Hovde, who has spent about $3 million so far on TV ads and is dominating the airwaves.

The race had been in the shadow of Gov. Scott Walker's recall for the first half of the year. But following the Walker victory on June 5, the open Senate seat that will help determine whether Democrats hold on to the chamber has emerged as the top race in Wisconsin this year.

"For the most part it was a quiet June but expect some rock 'em, sock 'em action between now and Aug. 14," said Marquette pollster Charles Franklin on Wednesday.

The GOP needs a net gain of four seats to take control of the Senate, or three if Republican Mitt Romney is elected president, giving his vice president the tie-breaking vote.

The seat is open due to the retirement of Democratic Sen. Herb Kohl. Democrats have held it since 1957 when Republican Joe McCarthy died in office. If the GOP can win this year, it would mark the first time since McCarthy was in office that they held both of Wisconsin's Senate seats.

A Marquette University Law School poll released Wednesday showed Thompson leading Hovde by 15 points, down from the 18-point lead he had in a June 20 poll. However, Hovde's support rose from 14 percent to 23 percent while Thompson's was nearly unchanged at 35 percent.

"The bottom line is that Eric is continuing to surge while Governor Thompson remains stuck in the low- to mid-30s," Hovde spokesman Sean Lansing said.

But Thompson spokesman Darrin Schmitz said the poll shows Thompson is trusted by GOP voters given that his numbers were unchanged despite being outspent 6-1 by Hovde on TV.

Former U.S. Rep. Mark Neumann was third in the poll with 10 percent and Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald was last at 6 percent. Twenty-five percent were undecided, the same as in last month's poll.

The random telephone poll of 432 likely primary voters was conducted July 5 through Sunday. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.8 percentage points.

Fitzgerald said he hoped that Thompson and Hovde would attack one another, creating an opening for him to attract voters. Still, he said the fact that 25 percent of voters are undecided shows they still haven't focused on the race.

Fitzgerald, who reported only raising about $100,000 through March, hasn't run any ads yet and is trying to capitalize on his position as Assembly speaker and lead cheerleader for Walker's conservative agenda in the Legislature.

Neumann, who has the backing of Club for Growth and numerous conservative congressmen, launched his first TV ad Tuesday and said he feels he's in a good position despite being down in the polls.

U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin is the only Democrat in the race. She has run two TV ads so far and has been building her campaign and raising money while the Republicans duke it out for their party's nomination on Aug. 14.

The Marquette poll showed that no matter who Baldwin faces, the race is within the margin of error at this point.

Hovde, Neumann and Fitzgerald have been trying to court conservative voters in the GOP primary and paint Thompson as out of touch with the current leanings of the party. They and conservative outside groups have struck particularly hard on Thompson's shifting views of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law that was upheld as constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court last month.

Club for Growth, in an ad run last year, showed a clip of Obama praising Thompson on health care in 2009. And last month, Club for Growth circulated a clip of Thompson from 2006 on C-SPAN saying he supported the individual mandate that is at the heart of Obama's health care law.

Thompson has since come out forcefully against the mandate, including raising concerns about it during a 2008 Senate Finance Committee hearing. On the campaign trail, Thompson has said he opposes the entire law and would vote to repeal it if elected to the Senate.

Neumann's TV ad released Tuesday attacks Obama on health care but doesn't mention Thompson or any of the other candidates. Neumann said his goal was to remind conservative voters about his credentials and bolster his argument that he should be their choice in the primary.

Neumann said he felt good about his position at this point in the race, given that his opponents have spent about $3 million on ads before he even went on the air. Nearly all of that was spent by Hovde.

Hovde, a hedge fund investor who recently moved back to Wisconsin after spending 24 years in Washington, D.C., is running his first political campaign. He's had the strongest presence on TV, largely focusing his ads on the nation's debt and other fiscal problems as he tries to introduce himself to voters.

The four Republican candidates have agreed to a July 30 debate on a Green Bay radio station. One more debate is being organized for the Friday before the primary.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/wis-senate-candidates-ramp-tv-ad-buys-160526175--finance.html

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