In the 2012 Missouri Senate race, incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill ran ads during the GOP primary campaign saying that Todd Akin was "too conservative." The idea of the "attack ad" was to drive GOP voters to Akin, her weakest potential foe. It worked. Other campaigns have tried the same thing.
Henry J. Gomez and Natasha Korecki at NBC:
Henry J. Gomez and Natasha Korecki at NBC:
Democrats bracing for devastating midterm losses this fall are zeroing in on a strategy that lands them on the battlefield now.
They are investing millions of dollars to meddle in Republican primaries for governor, attempting to elevate their preferred competitors in November or weaken their biggest threats.
Next week's messy GOP fight in Pennsylvania is the most blatant example. State Sen. Doug Mastriano is ahead in recent polls — and his would-be Democratic opponent wouldn’t mind if it stayed that way.
Democrat Josh Shapiro, the state attorney general running unopposed in his party's primary for governor, is airing an ad that brandishes Mastriano’s conservative credentials, making sure to say a Mastriano victory is a win "for what Donald Trump stands for." That's all but an endorsement in a GOP primary, but it could hurt later in a race where even some Republicans have doubts about Mastriano's electability.
That a Democrat is behind the ad underscores the lengths to which the party will go to engineer an easier general election in what's expected to be a volatile environment this fall.
"Both public and private polling indicate that Doug Mastriano is poised to become the Republican nominee on May 17 — and our campaign is prepared to start the general election now and make sure Pennsylvanians know his real record," Shapiro spokesperson Will Simons said in a statement to NBC News.
