A Super PAC linked to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has canceled more than $5 million in advertising for the Don Bolduc campaign.
The Senate Leadership Fund (SLF) announced on Oct. 22 that it was revoking the advertising dollars earmarked to promote the New Hampshire U.S. Senatorial candidate it had been planning to run in the final two weeks leading up to the Nov. 8 elections.
“As the cycle comes to a close, we are shifting resources to where they can be most effective to achieve our ultimate goal: winning the majority,” SLF Fund president and co-founder Steven Law said in a statement.
The move follows public statements made by retired Army Brig. Gen. Bolduc that he would not support re-electing McConnell as the party’s leader.
Answering criticism that he was willing to take money from the Kentucky Senator while not supporting him, Bolduc said that it was McConnell’s party-line duty to support Republican candidates.
“I’m very appreciative of Senator McConnell’s support, but that’s his job,” Bolduc said.
So far, Bolduc has not said publicly who he'd like to see in McConnell’s place and did not respond to inquiries by The Epoch Times about the reasons he doesn’t support him to continue as the Senate Republican leader.
Bolduc had lost substantial advertising dollars a month earlier when the campaign arm of the National Republican Senatorial Committee diverted $2.5 million it was planning to spend in New Hampshire to other national races in other states.
However, on Oct. 26, T.W. Arrighi, National Press Secretary for NRSC told The Epoch Times that the committee this week decided to invest “around $1 million” in TV air time for the Bolduc campaign.
“Bolduc is running a good race; he is running a very New Hampshire race,” said Arrighi, saying that Bolduc’s town hall meet and greets have drawn an impressive crowd for a candidate that had been for the “most part flying under the radar.”
Arrighi said the NRSC also believes Democrat Maggie Hassan’s lack of public appearances is also proving self-defeating for the Democratic incumbent.
“Maggie Hassan is trying to phone in this race,“ said Arrighi, ”Holding barely a campaign event a week when you’re up against the ropes is a recipe for disaster in New Hampshire.”
With some irony, Hassan has blamed Bolduc’s fast-moving political success on what she called the “dark money of Mitch McConnell.”
While McConnell’s Super PAC pull-out came at a time when Bolduc was still trailing Hassan in polls, a survey since released by Emerson College shows if anything he is quickly gaining on Hassan, with results indicating Hassan’s 11 percent lead over Bolduc had narrowed to 3 percent.
In September, Hassan’s own campaign manager downplayed her lead in an internal memo, saying the media is left leaning and tends to sugar coat polls in favor of Democratic candidates.
Bolduc has stated publicly that he can defeat Hassan with or without the support of the national party.
Bolduc whose early following was mostly hard-line right wingers, has already been accused of disavowing party loyalty when immediately following his primary win he abandoned his staunch position that the 2016 presidential election was stolen. He flipped to saying that Joe Biden was the legitimate president.
